Flexiant “opens” up Cloud Orchestrator Platform

Flexiant has launched Flexiant Cloud Orchestrator version 4, aimed squarely at helping service providers increase profit, revenue and growth from cloud services.

451 Group, Research Director for Infrastructure Software, Michael Coté said: “It’s clear that there’s a rising demand for public cloud services, creating a pull from service providers for cloud enablement platforms. The challenge for service providers is to simultaneously stand up robust cloud services and at the same time establish differentiated services for which service providers can charge more than just commodity cloud prices to rise above cookie cutter approaches.”

George Knox, CEO of Flexiant, said: “Service providers need to get ahead on the cloud battleground. Often, however, they are apathetic, apprehensive and sometimes defensive in their approach to cloud with some strategies actually putting these service providers on the back foot. Flexiant Cloud Orchestrator solves these issues by helping service providers develop their own unique services to differentiate and lead through innovation to generate more revenue and accelerate growth.”

Flexiant has opened up version 4 of Flexiant Cloud Orchestrator to deliver a new platform that supports easy integration with third party technologies, as well as future support for OpenStack. This gives service providers access to a wide range of third party plugins allowing them to tailor a vast arsenal of differentiated services with which to secure new customers and revenue stream. As the only management software needed to power a cloud, service providers can now compete against Amazon’s ease of use, while differentiating in the cloud industry with customizable software that allows them to deploy solutions right for their customers.

Tony Lucas, SVP Product and Founder said: “Central to offering a complete range of cloud services is our new Plugin ‘Trigger’ technology which opens up our platform. It allows service providers to differentiate by applying customization to core business logic and enable ecosystem partners to tightly integrate with the platform through both inbound and outbound APIs.”

“The Plugin Trigger technology is the landmark feature within Flexiant Cloud Orchestrator V4 because we now offer the ability for service providers to easily modify and extend their platform based on their own needs, increasing the ability to differentiate, and to deliver the services their customers want.”

Flexiant also announced today its product roadmap that includes support for OpenStack in Summer 2014. Flexiant will give service providers a rapidly deployable, functionally rich, service provider ready solution based on OpenStack, extending its existing similar capabilities for VMware vSphere and Hyper-V as well as its continued direct support for Xen and KVM.

Knox continued: “By opening up our platform and announcing OpenStack support, we are delivering unparalleled choice to make it even easier for hosters through to large telcos to build and launch innovative and commercially viable cloud services quickly into the market.”

Version 4 features beyond the Plugin ‘Trigger’ technology includes:
1. Direct support for the Chef configuration management tool from Opscode, including integration with Flexiant’s Blueprint technology, Bento Boxes, enabling powerful new use cases.
2. General availability for Ceph, a distributed block store storage system designed to provide excellent performance, reliability and scalability, ensuring Flexiant now supports all common storage modals.
3. Improved Billing System enabling both subscription and metered billing for services providers and their resellers
4. Enhanced ability to on-board customers based on their geography, language and billing requirements
5. New payment provider plug-in to integrate with multiple payment providers
6. Multi-tiered billing systems to solve complex billing scenarios
7. Context sensitive Help within the UI that can be branded and white labeled as required

Knox concluded: “Our goal at Flexiant is to constantly innovate to offer service providers the solutions they need to do the same. V4 changes the way service providers can deploy cloud services, easily integrate with third party technologies and customize and deploy solutions right for their customers. We are enabling service providers and our partners to help each other win the cloud war.”