Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Inside story: How Ormuco abstracts the concepts of private and public cloud across the globe

The next BriefingsDirect cloud ecosystem strategies interview explores how a Canadian software provider delivers a hybrid cloud platform for enterprises and service providers alike.

We'll now learn how Ormuco has identified underserved regions and has crafted a standards-based hybrid cloud platform to allow its users to attain world-class cloud services just about anywhere.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Read a full transcript or  download a copy.

Here to help us explore how new breeds of hybrid cloud are coming to more providers around the globe thanks to the Cloud28+ consortium is Orlando Bayter, CEO and Founder of Ormuco in Montréal, and Xavier Poisson Gouyou Beachamps, Vice President of Worldwide Indirect Digital Services at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), based in Paris. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

Here are some excerpts:

Gardner: Let’s begin with this notion of underserved regions. Orlando, why is it that many people think that public cloud is everywhere for everyone when there are many places around the world where it is still immature? What is the opportunity to serve those markets?

Bayter: There are many countries underserved by the hyperscale cloud providers. If you look at Russia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), around the world, they want to comply with regulations on security, on data sovereignty, and they need to have the clouds locally to comply.

Bayter
Ormuco targets those countries that are underserved by the hyperscale providers and enables service providers and enterprises to consume cloud locally, in ways they can’t do today.

Gardner: Are you allowing them to have a private cloud on-premises as an enterprise? Or do local cloud providers offer a common platform, like yours, so that they get the best of both the private and public hybrid environment?

Bayter: That is an excellent question. There are many workloads that cannot leave the firewall of an enterprise. With that, you now need to deliver the economies, ease of use, flexibility, and orchestration of a public cloud experience in the enterprise. At Ormuco, we deliver a platform that provides the best of the two worlds. You are still leaving your data center and you don't need to worry whether it’s on-premises or off-premises.

It's a single pane of glass. You can move the workloads in that global network via established providers throughout the ecosystem of cloud services.
It’s a single pane of glass. You can move the workloads in that global network via established providers throughout the ecosystem of cloud services.

Gardner: What are the attributes of this platform that both your enterprise and service provider customers are looking for? What’s most important to them in this hybrid cloud platform?

Bayter: As I said, there are some workloads that cannot leave the data center. In the past, you couldn’t get the public cloud inside your data center. You could have built a private cloud, but you couldn’t get an Amazon Web Services (AWS)-like solution or a Microsoft Azure-like solution on-premises.

We have been running this now for two years and what we have noticed is that enterprises want to have the ease-of-use, sales, service, and orchestration on-premises. Now, they can connect to a public cloud based on the same platform and they don’t have to worry about how to connect it or how it will work. They just decide where to place this.

They have security, can comply with regulations, and gain control -- plus 40 percent savings compared with VMware, and up to 50 percent to 60 percent compared with AWS.

Gardner: I’m also interested in the openness of the platform. Do they have certain requirements as to the cloud model, such as OpenStack?  What is it that enables this to be classified as a standard cloud?

Bayter: At Ormuco, we went out and checked what are the best solutions and the best platform that we can bring together to build this experience on-premises and off-premises.

We saw OpenStack, we saw Docker, and then we saw how to take, for example, OpenStack and make it like a public cloud solution. So if you look at OpenStack, the way I see it is as concrete, or a foundation. If you want to build a house or a condo on that, you also need the attic. Ormuco builds that software to be able to deliver that cloud look and feel, that self-service, all in open tools, with the same APIs both on private and public clouds.

Learn How Cloud 28+
Of Cloud Service Providers

Gardner: What is it about the HPE platform beneath that that supports you? How has HPE been instrumental in allowing that platform to be built?

Community collaboration

Bayter: HPE has been a great partner. Through Cloud28+ we are able to go to markets in places that HPE has a presence. They basically generate that through marketing, through sales. They were able to bring deals to us and help us grow our business.

From a technology perspective, we are using HPE Synergy. With Synergy, we can provide composability, and we can combine storage and compute into a single platform. Now we go together into a market, we win deals, and we solve the enterprise challenges around security and data sovereignty.

Gardner: Xavier, how is Cloud28+ coming to market, for those who are not familiar with it? Tell us a bit about Cloud28+ and how an organization like Ormuco is a good example of how it works.

Poisson Gouyou Beauchamps
Poisson: Cloud28+ is a community of IT players -- service providers, technology partners, independent software vendors (ISVs), value added resellers, and universities -- that have decided to join forces to enable digital transformation through cloud computing. To do that, we pull our resources together to have a single platform. We are allowing the enterprise to discover and consume cloud services from the different members of Cloud28+.

We launched Cloud28+ officially to the market on December 15, 2016. Today, we have more than 570 members from across the world inside Cloud28+. Roughly 18,000 distributed services may be consumed and we also have system integrators that support the platform. We cover more than 300 data centers from our partners, so we can provide choice.

In fact, we believe our customers need to have that choice. They need to know what is available for them. As an analogy, if you have your smartphone, you can have an app store and do what you want as a consumer. We wanted to do the same and provide the same ease for an enterprise globally anywhere on the planet. We respect diversity and what is happening in every single region.

Ormuco has been one of the first technology partners. Docker is another one. And Intel is another. They have been working together with HPE to really understand the needs of the customer and how we can deliver very quickly a cloud infrastructure to a service provider and to an enterprise in record time. At the same time, they can leverage all the partners from the catalog of content and services, propelled by Cloud28+, from the ISVs.

Global ecosystem, by choice 

Because we are bringing together a global ecosystem, including the resellers, if a service provider builds a project through Cloud28+, with a technology partner like Ormuco, then all the ISVs are included. They can push their services onto the platform, and all the resellers that are part of the ecosystem can convey onto the market what the service providers have been building.

We have a lot of collaboration with Ormuco to help them to design their solutions. Ormuco has been helping us to design what Cloud28+ should be, because it's a continuous improvement approach on Cloud28+ and it’s via collaboration.

If you want to join Cloud28+ to take, don't come. If you want to give, and take a lot afterward, yes, please come, because we all receive a lot.
As I like to say, “If you want to join Cloud28+ to take, don't come. If you want to give, and take a lot afterward, yes, please come, because we all receive a lot.”

Gardner: Orlando, when this all works well, whatdo your end-users gain in terms of business benefits? You mentioned reduction in costs, that's very important, of course. But is there more about your platform from a development perspective and an operational perspective that we can share to encourage people to explore it?

Bayter: So imagine yourself with an ecosystem like Cloud28+. They have 500 members. They have multiple countries, many data centers.

Now imagine that you can have the Ormuco solution on-premises in an enterprise and then be able to burst to a global network of service providers, across all those regions. You get the same performance, you get the same security, and you get the same compliance across all of that.

For an end-customer, you don’t need to think anymore where you’re going to put your applications. They will go to the public cloud, they will go to the private cloud. It is agnostic. You basically place it where you want it to go and decide the economies you want to get. You can compare with the hyperscale providers.

That is the key, you get one platform throughout our ecosystem of partners that can deliver to you that same functionality and experience locally. With a community such as Cloud28+, we can accomplish something that was not possible before.

Gardner: So, just hoping to delineate between the development and then the operations in production. Are you offering the developer an opportunity to develop there and seamlessly deploy, or are you more focused on the deployment after the applications are developed, or both?

Development to deployment 

Bayter: With our solution, same as AWS or Azure allows, a developer can develop their app via APIs, automated, use a database of choice (it could be MySQL, Oracle), and the load balancing and the different features we have in the cloud, whether it’s Kubernetes or Docker, build all that -- and then when the application is ready, you can decide in which region you want to deploy the application.

So you go from development, to deployment technology of your choice, whether it’s Docker or Kubernetes, and then you can deploy to the global network that we’re building on Cloud28+. You can go to any region, and you don’t have to worry about how to get a service provider contract in Russia, or how do I get a contract in Brazil? Who is going to provide me with the service? Now you can get that service locally through a reseller, a distributor, or have an ISV deploythe software worldwide.

Gardner: Xavier, what other sorts of organizations should be aware of the Cloud28+ network?

Learn How Cloud 28+
Of Cloud Service Providers

We accelerate go-to-market for startups, they gain immediate global reach with Cloud28+.
Poisson: We have the technology partners like Ormuco, and we are thankful for what they have brought to the community. We have service providers, of course, software vendors, because you can publish your software in Cloud28+ and provision it on-premises or off-premises. We accelerate go-to-market for startups, they gain immediate global reach with Cloud28+. So to all the ISVs, I say, “Come on, come on guys, we will help you reach out to the market.”

System integrators also, because we see this is an opportunity for the large enterprises and governments with a lot of multi-cloud projects taking care, having requirements for  security. And you know what is happening with security today, it's a hot topic. So people are thinking about how they can have a multi-cloud strategy. System integrators are now turning to Cloud28+ because they find here a reservoir of all the capabilities to find the right solution to answer the right question.

Universities are another kind of member we are working with. Just to explain, we know that all the technologies are created first at the university and then they evolve. All the startups are starting at the university level. So we have some very good partnerships with some universities in several regions in Portugal, Germany, France, and the United States. These universities are designing new projects with members of Cloud28+, to answer questions of the governments, for example, or they are using Cloud28+ to propel the startups into the market.

Ormuco is also helping to change the business model of distribution. So distributors now also are joining Cloud28+. Why? Because a distributor has to make a choice for its consumers. In the past, a distributor had software inventory that they were pushing to the resellers. Now they need to have an inventory of cloud services.

There is more choice. They can purchase hyperscale services, resell, or maybe source to the different members of Cloud28+, according to the country they want to deliver to. Or they can own the platform using the technology of Ormuco, for example, and put that in a white-label model for the reseller to propel it into the market. This is what Azure is doing in Europe, typically. So new kinds of members and models are coming in.

Digital transformation

Lastly, an enterprise can use Cloud28+ to make their digital transformation. If they have services and software, they can become a supplier inside of Cloud28+. They source cloud services inside a platform, do digital transformation, and find a new go-to-market through the ecosystem to propel their offerings onto the global market.

Gardner: Orlando, do you have any examples that you could share with us of a service provider, ISV or enterprise that has white-labeled your software and your capabilities as Xavier has alluded to? That’s a really interesting model.

Bayter: We have been able to go-to-market to countries where Cloud28+ was a tremendous help. If you look at Western Europe, Xavier was just speaking about Microsoft Azure. They chose our platform and we are deploying it in Europe, making it available to the resellers to help them transform their consumption models.

They provide public cloud and they serve many markets. They provide a community cloud for governments and they provide private clouds for enterprises -- all from a single platform.
If you look at the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, we have one of the largest managed service providers. They provide public cloud and they serve many markets. They provide a community cloud for governments and they provide private clouds for enterprises -- all from a single platform.

We also have several of the largest telecoms in Latin America (LATAM) and EMEA. We have a US presence, where we have Managed.com as a provider. So things are going very well and it is largely thanks to what Cloud28+ has done for us.

Gardner: While this consortium is already very powerful, we are also seeing new technologies coming to the market that should further support the model. Such things as HPE New Stack, which is still in the works, HPE Synergy’s composability and auto-bursting, along with security now driven into the firmware and the silicon -- it’s almost as if HPE’s technology roadmap is designed for this very model, or very much in alignment. Tell us how new technology and the Cloud28+ model come together.

Bayter: So HPE New Stack is becoming the control point of multi-cloud. Now what happens when you want to have that same experience off-premises and on-premises? New Stack could connect to Ormuco as a resource provider, even as it connects to other multi-clouds.

With an ecosystem like Cloud28+ all working together, we can connect those hybrid models with service providers to deliver that experience to enterprises across the world.

Learn How Cloud 28+
Of Cloud Service Providers

Gardner: Xavier, anything more in terms of how HPE New Stack and Cloud28+ fit? 

Partnership is top priority

Poisson: It’s a real collaboration. I am very happy with that because I have been working a long time at HPE, and New Stack is a project that has been driven by thinking about the go-to-market at the same time as the technology. It’s a big reward to all the Cloud28+ partners because they are now de facto considered as resource providers for our end-user customers – same as the hyperscale providers, maybe.

At HPE, we say we are in partnership first -- with our partners, or ecosystem, or channel. I believe that what we are doing with Cloud28+, New Stack, and all the other projects that we are describing – this will be the reality around the world. We deliver on-premises for the channel partners.

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