OnApp has released a web and mobile portal for VMware vCloud Director, providing the user interface for service providers offering VMware-based cloud rife with Director features.The portal is rebrandable, and customizable.
OnApp provides an IaaS platform service providers use to set up and sell cloud to their customers. It provides the billing and orchestration functionality. Now these service providers can easily do the same for VMware-based cloud offerings, leveraging vCloud Director features and offer a nice user interface, rich with new features to their customers. A beta-testing period involved around a hundred service providers.
OnApp has previously provided a management orchestration layer on top of vCenter, VMware's centralized platform for managing vSphere environments. “vCloud Director in my mind is the second step in building a comprehensive set of products on VMware technologies,” said Shankar. “There is a lot of functionality in vCloud air that we expect will be released to service providers on vCloud director.”
OnApp helping VMware service providers provision and manage cloud services in the same way that it has done for clouds based on open source virtualization platforms.
When vCloud director 5.6 was released last year, VMware made new functionality available only through APIs and third party interfaces.VMware wants to enable the channel to sell VMware-based cloud, and this is one way it is helping partners. OnApp has stepped in and created the end user portal and visual experience.
“VMware essentially welcomed partners to build the user interface,” said Narendar Shankar, President, OnApp USA. Shankar was formally with VMware and is heading VMware integration initiatives at OnApp. “We have an ecosystem of partners building atop of vCloud. A lot of service providers told us they wanted one portal for vCloud director. We want to be the leading integrator from a portal standpoint.”
Shankar also said that there are a lot of interesting options for tighter integrations in the future.
An early customer example is IndonesianCloud.The company is using OnApp to simplify the end user portal experience for their public cloud services. IndonesianCloud is a member of the vCloud Air network – Vmware’s service provider program.vCloud air was formerly known as vCloud Hybrid Service. The rebranding came along with new object storage and enhanced mobile application development capabilities.
