TORONTO, May 25, 2011 -- Platform Computing announced today it was among the vendors highlighted in a May 2011 report from Forrester Research, Inc. entitled “Market Overview: Private Cloud Solutions, Q2 2011.” The report examines vendors using customer references, a compulsory 30 minute demonstration and written responses.  The market overview examines the landscape of vendors providing solutions designed to accelerate the implementation of an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud in a customer’s data center. Across the 15 vendors that were able to meet the criteria to be considered for the report, Platform Computing received the highest score possible for role based access control (RBAC) and virtualization support, as well as scores of three or higher out of four possible points in six of the ten categories evaluated in the market overview.  

A complimentary copy of the full Forrester Research, Inc. report “Market Overview: Private Cloud Solutions, Q2 2011” is available here.

“By taking a disciplined approach to evaluating the private cloud market, Forrester Research has clearly shown the differentiation across private cloud vendors. Based upon the report findings, Platform’s ISF private cloud management product demonstrated clear advantages for companies needing self-service IT delivery, deep VMware orchestration, support for multiple business units with hierarchical self-management, alignment of physical and virtual resources, and dynamic workload and resource management capabilities,” said Jay Muelhoefer, Vice President Cloud, Platform Computing. “We believe this report validates Platform Computing’s position as a leading independent private cloud management software provider. Combined with Platform’s global enterprise support and 18 year history with over 2000 customers, Platform ISF is the natural choice when evaluating how to build a private cloud.”

Platform ISF

Platform ISF is a next-generation cloud management software product for enterprises to build and run private and hybrid clouds.  As demonstrated in the review process, Platform ISF creates a shared infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) computing infrastructure delivered to end users via a self-service portal and administered through a single unified cloud cockpit.  Platform ISF consolidates virtual (VMware, Xen, KVM, etc.), physical, storage and network resources to automate delivery of IT services according to a rich set of business policies for compliance, security, cost and performance.  The end result is higher resource utilization, more servers per administrator, and lower capital expenditures.  Key differentiators include:

• Multiple business unit support – enables hierarchical virtual private clouds for each business unit to self-manage according to resource quotas and policies with unlimited levels of delegation down to individual departments and projects.
• Maintains VMware investment but delivers openness – preserves current investments in VMware with bi-directional vCenter support and further extends capabilities such as end-user self-service for DRS.  Supports future growth with options for other VMs, including KVM and Xen, and provides management control over external cloud providers.
• Easy to use self-service portal – streamlines cloud applications processes through a fully customizable end-user portal, including reservations, alerts and monitoring, and service catalog management.
• Dynamic provisioning and application scaling – includes provisioning of simple to complex multi-tier applications for use cases such as Dev / Test but also supports runtime flexing of applications to meet dynamic demand requirements driven by business policies and service level agreements.  

About Platform Computing

Platform Computing is the leader in cluster, grid and cloud management software ― serving more than 2,000 of the world’s most demanding organizations. For 18 years, our workload and resource management solutions have delivered IT responsiveness and lower costs for enterprise and HPC applications. Platform has strategic relationships with Cray, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Red Hat, and SAS. Visit www.platform.com.