GreenQloud's QStack helps CCP play games
OpenStack continues to attract most of the attention, but other hybrid/private cloud infrastructures are still out there. Iceland's CloudStack-based GreenQloud is one, which continues to evolve its green and spook-proof story to meet additional customer requirements.
As I discussed back in February, the company took the code running in its Iceland and Washington State data centres, and turned it into something that customers could run for themselves. More interesting, in many ways, than just running GreenQloud code in your own data centre is the opportunity for building and managing hybrid clouds. We've seen plenty of stand-alone hybrid cloud management tools, from the likes of RightScale, Enstratius (acquired by and increasingly integrated with Dell) and others, but there are some interesting opportunities created when your cloud of choice gains the ability to control other pieces of your on- and off-premise IT estate.
Iceland's CCP is hardly a household name, but I'm sure many of you have heard of at least one of the company's creations - EVE Online. They're the latest to adopt QStack, and its hybrid capabilities clearly appealed… According to GreenQloud's press release,
CCP wanted their private cloud to have hybrid options which could be managed from a single pane of glass. With QStack, CCP can control both their internal infrastructure and burst into a public cloud provider of choice with a full project and departmental overview of usage,” said Jónsi Stefánsson, CEO of GreenQloud.
We're going to see a lot more of this. What's not yet clear is whether the dominant model will be one in which the familiar control panel of your favourite cloud extends to control other things (QStack's approach), or one in which a neutral third party tool (like RightScale's) becomes the single pane of glass on top of a set of interoperating cloudy APIs…