Optimizing Cloud Computing Through Cross- Domain Provisioning

Gale Technologies:
Optimizing Cloud Computing
through Cross-Domain Provisioning
An ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES® (EMA™) White Paper
Prepared for Gale Technologies
April 2011

IT & DATA MANAGEMENT RESEARCH,
INDUSTRY ANALYSIS & CONSULTING

Gale Technologies: Optimizing Cloud Computing

Table of Contents
Executive Introduction........................................................................................................................................1

Optimizing Infrastructure for Cloud and Hybrid Service Delivery ...........................................................1

Technologies for Provisioning Cloud Services.........................................................................................3

Gale Technologies ................................................................................................................................................4

GaleForce ........................................................................................................................................................4

Architecture and Functionality...........................................................................................................5

Some Deployment Highlights ............................................................................................................6

EMA Perspective ..................................................................................................................................................7

About Gale Technologies ...................................................................................................................................7

©2011 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com


Executive Introduction
After an initial period of deployment and experimentation, Cloud computing is now becoming a
catalyst for many innovative changes in technology design, technology adoption, and organizational
and process enhancements. Among other things, Cloud is clearly driving IT organizations to move
towards a more dynamic and cross-domain approach for managing
and optimizing change.
Cloud is clearly driving IT However, many of the solutions available on the market today
organizations to move towards for visibility, automation and responsible control of configuration
a more dynamic and cross- changes are costly and cumbersome to deploy. This is especially
domain approach for managing true when the full infrastructure is taken into account, including
and optimizing change. storage, network and systems devices, and virtual as well as
traditional software images – whether within a data center or
across geographies.
This ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES® (EMA™) report looks at some of the
benefits, requirements and best practices advancing the assimilation of Cloud computing, with a focus
on private Cloud and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). It will also discuss GaleForce, a unique offering
from Gale Technologies, which provides a versatile and effective way to optimize virtualized and hybrid
infrastructures without sacrificing application performance.

Optimizing Infrastructure for Cloud and Hybrid Service
Delivery
The U.S. National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) defines Cloud computing as: “a model
for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks,
servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort
or service provider interaction.”
A few salient features implied from this definition are that Cloud computing offers:
• On-demand self-service – so that users can in theory unilaterally provision computing capabilities or
access application services when needed.
• Broad network access – makes Cloud services available to a larger number of users across different
device types (e.g., mobile phones, laptops, PDAs, etc.).
• Resource pooling – typically requires dynamically assigning different physical and virtual resources
based on customer demand. This could mean dynamically reallocating systems, storage, network
bandwidth and applications based on user needs in a way that makes the physical and geographical
location of the resources invisible to the user.
• Rapid elasticity – so that resources can be quickly and easily provisioned based on demand.
NIST also defines three categories of Cloud services that can apply internally or externally:
• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) – Providers (internal or external) deliver applications to consumers over
a Cloud infrastructure typically accessed through a thin client interface, such as a Web browser.
• Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) – Here the provider offers both an underlying Cloud infrastructure
and application-related tools and resources such as programming languages to an internal or
external consumer.

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Page 1 ©2011 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com


• Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) – Providers deliver Cloud infrastructure support (systems/
processing, storage, networks, etc.) to support consumer (internal/external) requirements for
running applications and operating systems.
According to recent EMA research, most adoptions for Cloud are hybrid, but primarily private, with
some mix of public or community Cloud services, such as those provided by outside service providers,
or those delivered by communities of partners, developers or others in a business or organizational-
related ecosystem. Figure 1 shows data from the February 2011 EMA research report, Operationalizing
Cloud: The Move Towards a Cross-Domain Service Management Strategy, highlighting the overall mix of hybrid
Cloud environments.

In terms of your organization’s cloud deployments, which statement
best describes what stage your organization is at today?

Mostly internal / private cloud 36%

About half and half internal / external 27%

Mostly external / public or community cloud 17%

Completely internal / private cloud 15%

Completely external / public or community cloud 5%

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%

Column %

Figure 1: Hybrid environments Cloud dominate with internal, or private, Cloud
leading external or public and community offerings significantly

Quite aside from all the hype, Cloud deployments are clearly on the rise – and for good reason. Some
of the key benefits of Cloud include:
• Capex and opex savings
• Faster time to provision existing and new services
• Improved resiliency in support of service performance
• Improved backup and disaster recovery
• Business model benefits, including process improvements and revenue generation
And yet, 70% of respondents said they had to redo or rethink initial Cloud deployments!
Which is a natural lead into some of the more salient issues surrounding Cloud computing technologies.
Some of the topmost issues include:
• “Getting started” cost issues for transforming physical infrastructure to Cloud and virtualized
environments

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• Concerns surrounding security and governance
• Immature technologies still insufficient to support the provisioning and management of Cloud
services

Technologies for Provisioning Cloud Services
In Operationalizing Cloud, EMA assessed twelve core technologies associated with the lifecycle
management of Cloud services. These ranged from performance management and service management
analytics to configuration and change management capabilities. When mapped to “achieved benefits”
many of the results were striking.
Three of the technology correlations most relevant to provisioning include:
Visibility into infrastructure and service interdependencies:
• 1.4 times more likely to reduce complexity of management via Cloud
• 1.4 times more likely to improve service resilience via Cloud
• 1.6 times more likely to accelerate deployment of existing services via Cloud
• 1.6 times more likely to accelerate the creation of new services via Cloud
• 1.5 times more likely to increase infrastructure flexibility via Cloud
Automation to support or trigger cross-domain provisioning and configuration control:
• 1.5 times more likely to reduce management complexity
• 1.3 times more likely to reduce capital costs via Cloud
• 1.5 times more likely to free up resources for strategic projects
• 1.4 times more likely to accelerate the deployment of new services via Cloud
Service catalog capabilities:
• 1.4 times more likely to reduce management complexity
• 1.4 times more likely to reduce capital costs via Cloud
• 1.6 times more likely to accelerate creation of new services via Cloud
• 2.2 times more likely to expand revenue channels via Cloud Cloud has become a catalyst
Unfortunately, many of the solutions employed to support these to stimulate new entrants
requirements are very expensive, complex and unwieldy to deploy, with more dynamic and often
administer and keep current. In a part as a result, Cloud has complementary approaches
become a catalyst to stimulate new entrants with more dynamic to more established service
and often complementary approaches to more established service management, configuration
management, configuration and provisioning capabilities. and provisioning capabilities.

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Gale Technologies
Gale Technologies is a recent entrant with a track record of delivering impressive levels of efficiency in
provisioning cross-domain software/hardware infrastructure for Cloud services. Not surprisingly then,
Gale Technologies has also been fast growing, with an aggressive percentage (70%) of new customers
including some Fortune 500 companies. Currently, many customers are top-tier technology and
equipment vendors (e.g., network/systems/storage) and global service providers, along with a number
of government and military customers. Enterprise customers are also on the rise. Gale Technologies’
solutions are supporting applications such as test and development, proof-of-concept, sales demo,
training, data center staging and QA, and IT operations.
Gale Technologies’ products are directed at provisioning IaaS across Cloud and hybrid environments,
primarily for private and community Cloud services.

GaleForce
GaleForce is Gale Technologies’ flagship product for dynamic infrastructure optimization and
provisioning. Its outstanding strengths in cross-domain support and ease of deployment are highlighted
by its current GaleForce Turnkey Cloud offering and its Build a Cloud in 2 Steps and 2 Weeks campaign. This
solution offers a turnkey product bundle that can be downloaded in an Open Virtualization Format
(OVF) file onto a VMware hypervisor for rapid deployment. The Turnkey Cloud supports existing
and legacy environments that include virtualization, physical servers, networking, storage, and software
repositories for OS and ESXi images.
A screenshot of the main client and Web portal interfaces is shown in Figure 2.

GaleForce Control
Center provides resource
management, template
authoring, and automated
end-to-end provisioning for
physical and virtual resources
across application, computing,
networking, and storage tiers.

The GaleForce Web Portal enables
self-service and on-demand
fulfillment of infrastructure service
requests, based on templates
published by the system admin.

Figure 2: GaleForce Control Center and Web Portal Client Interfaces

Page 4


Architecture and Functionality
At the heart of Gale Technologies’ architectural and functional strengths is the GaleForce Server, which
provides support for inventory and resource allocation; template design and visualization; resource
scheduling and reservation, together with capacity allocation and management, and the highly flexible
automation workflow engine that enables the cross-domain end-to-end provisioning that GaleForce is
known for.
The GaleForce Control Center client is used by administrators and architects for managing resources
and resource pools, and for designing and modeling infrastructure and service templates that can be
published to the end-user communities. Such templates represent pre-built designs for workloads that
can range from individual physical or virtual resources, such as servers or virtual machines, to full,
top-to-bottom software stacks, to complete end-to-end multi-tier architectures.
The GaleForce Web Portal is a self-service catalog-like interface through which users can browse, select,
schedule and have resources automatically provisioning based on the wide range of predefined
templates. The Web Portal includes support for custom-branding to an organization’s own look and
feel, and is designed for one-click access to enable the levels of efficiency and scalability needed for
already existing global deployments.
The GaleForce Resource Adapter Framework is what enables the
GaleForce server to control, automate and orchestrate a wide range
The GaleForce Resource of physical and resource types, through the plug-in Resource Adapters.
Adapter Framework enables To date, over 130 Resource Adapters have been built and deployed
the GaleForce server to by Gale and its customers using the Resource Adapter SDK.
control, automate and
The Resource Adapter Framework is an extensible and modular
orchestrate a wide range of layer in the GaleForce architecture that supports adapters or drivers
physical and resource types. to a wide range of products and technologies, including: servers and
computing resources; switches, routers, and networking equipment;
storage arrays and storage area networking products; firewall,
security, and access equipment; hypervisors and virtualization management software; file servers and
version control repositories; public Cloud APIs; plus element managers and other software applications
Figure 3 shows a diagram of the GaleForce architecture.

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Figure 3: GaleForce Architecture

Some Deployment Highlights
One large, global and multi-site community Cloud deployment to support partner development and
compatibility testing across a wide range of network and data center devices has saved dramatically in
hardware (capex) costs, but even more dramatically in opex-related travel and installation time. HW
and SW images are provisioned within the main sites and remotely
to partner locations via a VPN, with payback achieved well within
One large, global and the first year. This particular type of hybrid Cloud spanning both
multi-site community Cloud vendor and partner sites is enabling an efficient developer ecosystem
deployment has saved and speeding time to market for all the participants.
dramatically in hardware A similar environment – this time targeted at channels and resellers
(capex) costs, but even more – required working models of critical tier-1 applications such as
dramatically in opex-related Oracle, Exchange and SAP to be scheduled with guaranteed
travel and installation time. availability within specific timeslots, to effectively replicate
customer environments for demos and Proofs of Concept (PoCs).
This community Cloud capability has grown from a hundred to
three thousand registered channel users within the last twelve months across North America, Europe,
Asia and Africa. Initial setup took less than six months. The savings in opex and capex costs have been
so obvious that plans for continued aggressive expansion remain in place today.

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A third case, currently under way, involves an enterprise that provides specialized software and services
to a particular business community, and who wants to essentially become a service provider to its
customer base. Here, GaleForce is being used to dynamically provision infrastructure and services
from shared pools of resources that include both new and legacy equipment, and which are made
available to the user base through a custom Web portal.
These case scenarios, provided directly from Gale Technologies with permission from its client base,
clearly serve to reinforce the efficiencies and values of GaleForce in actual deployments.

EMA Perspective
Gale Technologies’ GaleForce shows such obvious promise that it
is already becoming a disruptive and catalytic force in the market. GaleForce shows such obvious
Its breadth of support across domains, including storage, unique promise that it is already
virtualization requirements, and even power efficiencies, as well as becoming a disruptive and
systems and network devices and software image libraries, make it catalytic force in the market.
distinctive. And when this is all contained in a package optimized
for easy scalability and administration, it becomes unique.
GaleForce is, on the other hand, new and although its integration and customization capabilities are
rich, it has yet to have fully defined integrations for broader service management systems. In the future,
these linkages should provide support for performance and service-level management, as well as ties to
CMDBs and Configuration Management Systems focused on capturing application-to-infrastructure
interdependencies.
However, Gale Technologies is well aware of these requirements. Even more importantly, GaleForce
is already proven and mature enough today to offer strong advantages to a wide range of use case
environments. EMA expects to see GaleForce grow dramatically in the enterprise space in the coming
years and looks forward to the positive effects upon the industry as its efficiencies become more
apparent as both an advantage to its customers and a challenge to its potential vendor competitors.

About Gale Technologies
With over 100 live deployments powered by its products, Gale Technologies is a trusted provider of
advanced software solutions that automate and orchestrate IT resources – allowing organizations to
accelerate and streamline the delivery of infrastructure as a service and migrate to Cloud computing
environments. As a pioneer of innovative solutions for fine-grained resource provisioning, and
workflow scheduling and automation across networking, server, storage, and virtualization technologies,
Gale allows thousands of users to reserve, schedule and execute workloads on shared, heterogeneous,
dynamic environments with unprecedented flexibility. Gale’s customers report CAPEX and OPEX
savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars per site from converting legacy silos of IT environments
into fully automated and shared dynamic environments that can be securely accessed 24/7 from
anywhere in the world.
Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Gale serves a global customer base with offices in North
America and Asia. For more information, visit www.galetechnologies.com.

Page 7

About Enterprise Management Associates, Inc.
Founded in 1996, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) is a leading industry analyst firm that provides deep insight across the full spectrum of IT
and data management technologies. EMA analysts leverage a unique combination of practical experience, insight into industry best practices, and in-depth
knowledge of current and planned vendor solutions to help its clients achieve their goals. Learn more about EMA research, analysis, and consulting services
for enterprise IT professionals, lines of business users, and IT vendors at www.enterprisemanagement.com or follow EMA on Twitter.

This report in whole or in part may not be duplicated, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or retransmitted without prior written permission of
Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All opinions and estimates herein constitute our judgement as of this date and are subject to change without notice.
Product names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies. “EMA” and “Enterprise Management
Associates” are trademarks of Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. in the United States and other countries.
©2011 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. EMA™, ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES®, and the mobius symbol
are registered trademarks or common-law trademarks of Enterprise Management Associates, Inc.

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Optimizing Cloud Computing Through Cross- Domain Provisioning

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