enStratus introduces support for VMware vSphere private clouds and Google public storage cloud

enStratus is a US company offering a cloud management platform that brokers different public and private Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) cloud architectures, including Amazon EC2 and S3, Eucalyptus, GoGrid, Rackspace, Cloud.com, ReliaCloud, Terremark, Microsoft Windows Azure and even the brand new Google Storage for Developers.

The product arrives as a 3-tier application that can stay hosted on enStratus servers or running on-premises inside the cloud infrastructure. The components are: the credentials system, the provisioning system and the console.

enstratusGUI

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Zuora launches a billing system for cloud platforms

Last week Zuora announced a version of its billing product Z-Commerce specifically tailored for cloud computing architectures.

The product is able to integrate with multiple IaaS, PaaS and SaaS cloud platforms, and meters the resource usage by multiple units of measure: terabyte stored, IP addresses, gigabyte transferred, CPU instances, application users, etc.
The metrics can be used into over 20 different pricing models, including on demand charging, reservation, location-based, off-peak pricing and more.
The engine then automatically generates and manages the invoices, including payment tracking, refunds, etc.

On top of that, Zuora can host the Z-Commerce storefront on behalf of the cloud provider, managing the users purchases and interacting with the cloud platform accordingly.

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VMware working to port the Spring framework on Amazon EC2

During an interview with GigaOM at the Structure 2010 conference two weeks ago, the VMware’s CEO Paul Maritz revealed that his company is working with Amazon to deliver the tc Server and Spring framework, acquired from SpringSource in August 2009, on the Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) platform.

The deal, similar to the one that VMware signed with SalesForce for VMForce.com and the one signed with Google for AppEngine, would turn EC2, which is an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform into a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) platform, able to rival with Microsoft and its Azure offering.

According to The Register, Maritz expressed concerns about the VMware’s capability to evolve:

He also revealed he’s concerned VMware might miss out on the transition to cloud computing. According to Martiz, technology is easy to alter. It’s an inability to change business models that holds companies back. "I worry a lot about are we are the tail end of one generation [of computing] and the beginning of another," he said.

Diane Greene is back: Nimbula leaves the stealth mode and enters the IaaS cloud computing market

Yes, it’s true: virtualization.info already used the “Diane is back” theme in February, when the founder and former CEO of VMware sort of reappeared on the virtualization market as an investor of the startup Nicira.
But Nicira still is in stealth mode at this point and the Greene’s role in there will probably be all but operational.

She may be more active in another startup that emerges today from the stealth mode: Nimbula (formerly Benguela).
Greene will be a board member, advising an interesting team of former Amazon and VMware employees.

The company has been founded in 2008 by Chris Pinkham (CEO) and Willem van Biljon.
Pinkham is the former Vice President of Engineering at Amazon.com, where he spent five years, and one of the founders of Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2). van Biljon was an Amazon Director, leading the EC2 development team, but in his career he founded Mosaic Software and managed it for over 11 years.

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