A few years ago there was a big trend towards tools that claimed to enable cloud-bursting – the live moving of excess workloads from on-premises infrastructure into the cloud. While that use case has pretty much been dismissed as being fictional and the stuff of unicorns and rainbows, the same technology is being re-hashed for more pragmatic use-cases.

One of these migration vendors is CloudVelox. The company has been around since 2010 and has proven to be a bit of a stayer – whereas other similar companies have folded or succumbed to the acquisitive attentions of larger players, CloudVelox has remained independent. That’s not to say it has been beating the same drum all that time, as I mentioned, these companies have had to change their messaging as needs and industry trends dictated.

CloudVelox now suggests that it is a cloud automation and orchestration software vendor that isn’t just about workload mobility but is also about optimizing workload placements. Whatever the messaging, CloudVelox is doubling down on its hybrid story today with the announcement of its latest release that is focused on enabling automated mass-migrations to private data centers with VMware virtualized environments.

The company is pushing three specific use-cases that it believes are of pressing concern to enterprises:

  • Cloud to Data Center Migrations
  • Data Center to Data Center Migrations
  • Rack to Rack Migrations (Intra Data Center)

Leveraging the blueprinting smarts

Previously, CloudVelox had delivered several innovations including automated Application Blueprinting and automated network customization to enable automated migration and recovery from the data center to the cloud. That blueprinting, however, isn’t only relevant with migrations in this direction, it also enables migrations the other way and it makes sense to apply the blueprinting to enable all the different directions of travel.

Enabling hybrid IT

Hybrid IT, the idea of using both on-premises and cloud infrastructures in different ways, is increasingly the norm for enterprises. As such, by enabling migrations between clouds and on-premises, CloudVelox positions itself as a key tool for organizations that want to operate in a flexible, hybrid manner. CloudVelox talks about a boundary-less data center and while that might be overstating it a little bit, this new release certainly increases the options available to enterprise IT decision makers.

This hybrid use-case is a legitimate one as Raj Dhingra, Chief Executive Officer at CloudVelox points out:

As CIOs lead enterprises through a journey of digital transformation, one of the critical challenges they face is implementing their strategy of data center consolidation and hybrid cloud deployments. Public clouds offer the promise of business agility, cost savings and scale but might reduce IT flexibility and result in lock-in for certain business applications. Whether it’s moving workloads from data center to cloud, or between data centers, or bringing workloads back to the data center, enterprises can not only significantly improve IT productivity, but also reduce their risk of lock-in.

MyPOV

Any cloud migration vendor that has survived until today deserves much respect – it’s been a long and bloody battle. CloudVelox should, however, reap the rewards of its not insignificant staying power as enterprise requirements finally catch up to the promise that the technology offers.

Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

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