GigaSpaces exec explains how to put a middleman between your apps and the cloud.
Think you don't have the appropriate applications to make a significant move to the cloud? Think again.
It's been widely reported that cloud computing isn't a fit for all types of applications, or at the very least, that many companies do not feel comfortable moving mission-critical applications and the data they hold to the cloud. Typically uses for the cloud range from file storage to backup to hosting and e-mail, but mission-critical, transactional applications - such as those used by financial services companies - aren't often the ideal use-case presented by cloud providers.
That is, until GigaSpaces partnered with CA Technologies to deliver the GigaSpaces XAP AppLogic appliance, which Amnon Raviv, Head of the Executive Sales team covering Business Development and Strategic Alliances for GigaSpaces, says provides the elasticity needed for cloud environments to any application.
"The appliance is particularly relevant for customers in financial services, telco, e-commerce, specifically for mission-critical applications. [These apps] require extreme levels of performance, low latency and high availability, for example, applications in the financial services space, like reconciliation applications, fraud detection, risk analysis, risk portfolio analysis," says Raviv in a CA Technologies Cloud Luminary video. "In telco, OMS type applications on the management systems; the same as in e-commerce and retail, so highly transactional, complex applications."
The appliance and the technology it hosts acts as a middleman between the application and the environment in which it will reside, whether it be a private data center, a private cloud, a public cloud or a combination of them all. It makes sense that GigaSpaces, a middleware provider since 2000, would be poised and ready to apply its technology to cloud computing when it emerged and gained popularity later in the decade.
"Our middleware lent itself very well to cloud environments, highly virtualization, highly distributed environments," Raviv says. "Because of our ability to decouple, to abstract the application from the underlying topology of that environment, it is a lot easier for enterprises to move their application from one cloud environment to another. ... Otherwise you would have to rewrite the application and adapt, make it run well on Cloud A and then makes all these changes for its to run on Cloud B and then on Cloud C. It's pretty complex and expensive to do."
What applications do you send to the cloud? What hesitation do you have about using cloud with other applications? Please leave a comment here, let me know your thoughts via Twitter @DDubie or e-mail me directly at Denise.Dubie@ca.com.
Watch a short video about GigaSpaces here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M-gmHFCh2s