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10 Tools To Prevent Cloud Vendor Lock-in

Charles Babcock February 18, 2013 11:06 AM Nobody wants to be caught in proprietary traps in the cloud. These tools can help you avoid being hemmed in by one vendor.

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10 Tools To Prevent Cloud Vendor Lock-in

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Kaavo

Stamford, Conn.-based Kaavo takes a unique approach: Instead of focusing on cloud infrastructure, it focuses on application lifecycle management – regardless of whether the application is found on a public, private or hybrid cloud. To do this, it uses its own system definition file, a single XML file that captures a description of both the components and orchestration sequence of a complex application.

First included in 2009 in Kaavo's flagship IMOD workload deployment and orchestration engine, the use of the definition file allows IMOD to automatically prepare the workload for deployment to any of the major cloud environments. IMOD can simplify application code changes, updates and deployments down to a few clicks in the management console. It also tracks all changes to the definition file.

The definition file can invoke a workflow engine to perform scheduled events such as deployments. It can perform automated scaling and automated setup of secure network connections as needed.

Kaavo is intended to manage the lifecycle of the application as a cloud workload, so it can be used to govern development and testing as well as production deployment. It tracks hours of use for billing and chargeback. It can deploy to multiple cloud environments, but only one view of the application is maintained. It works with HP Cloud Services, Amazon Web Services EC2, IBM Enterprise SmartCloud, Logicworks, Rackspace, Terremark and VMware's vCloud Director-equipped clouds.

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By The Numbers

Base: 417 respondents at organizations using or planning to deploy data analytics, BI or statistical analysis software
Data: InformationWeek 2013 Analytics, Business Intelligence and Information Management Survey of 541 business technology professionals, October 2012

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