ASG provides Global 5000 businesses with world-class professional services and software solutions for Metadata Management, Applications Management, Operations Management, Content Management, Performance Management, Security Management, and Infrastructure Management.
Through a wealth of technologies, which have been either developed in-house or gained through strategic acquisitions, ASG enables clients with both mainframe and distributed environments to mobilise their resources, boost productivity, and enhance performance through the intelligent use of technology.
Business situation
For enterprises looking to automate and simplify the delivery of IT services for the private cloud, public cloud, and hybrid cloud, ASG wanted to offer a comprehensive solution proven to significantly reduce costs and decrease time to market.
They aimed to help customers plan, deploy and manage internally or externally hosted clouds that deliver an intuitive user experience accessible from any device.
Technical situation
As a result they set about developing CloudFactory to provide comprehensive cloud orchestration that will provision multi-vendor environments and automate most application delivery types – eliminating vendor lock-in.
This holistic, technology independent approach automates the delivery of IT services and leverages ASG’s 25 year record of enterprise IT management solutions.
The solution
A key part of the capabilities of CloudFactory is for organisations to have the ability to build their own enterprise grade private and hybrid cloud that can then be easily orchestrated. After an extensive evaluation process ASG identified Apache CloudStack as the most stable, enterprise grade, IaaS orchestration platform currently available.
ASG chose to directly integrate CloudStack into their CloudFactory platform allowing organisations to build their own private cloud and leverage CloudStack’s management interface in the administration of their cloud.
Benefits
Commenting on the use of CloudStack within CloudFactory, Pascal Vitoux, ASG’s Senior VP for development said, “CloudStack means that we can quickly and easily build cloud services within CloudFactory to offer on-demand, elastic cloud services.
“It allows us to take on hybrid platforms, making it easier to manage legacy environments while spinning up workloads that take advantage of the cloud model. It also offers higher efficiency, limitless scale and faster deployment of new services and systems to our customers.”
ASG chose to partner with ShapeBlue, the leading global, independent integrator of CloudStack for this project. ShapeBlue work closely with ASG and their customers to provide a seamless service for onboarding and integrating customers with existing CloudStack installations into the CloudFactory infrastructure.
Giles is CEO and founder of ShapeBlue and is responsible for overall company strategy, strategic relationships, finance and sales.
He is also a committer and PMC member of the Apache CloudStack project and Chairman of the European Cloudstack User Group, actively helping promote brand awareness of the technology.
Giles can regularly be heard speaking at events around the globe, delivering visionary talks on cloud computing adoption and more specifically on Cloudstack technologies.
Before ShapeBlue, Giles held C-Level technology positions for 15 years including founder and CEO of Octavia Information Systems, a leading UK Managed Service Provider.
Giles holds a BSc in Engineering Physics from Sheffield Hallam University. Outside work, Giles is married with two teenage children. He coaches children’s rugby, is a competitive masters swimmer and can regularly be seen crying when his beloved Tottenham Hotspur lose.
