Q&A: Digging Into the Channel Significance of the AppScale-Packet News

As more enterprises seek to avoid cloud vendor lock-in through hybrid options, providers are innovating and accommodating.

The latest such news this week comes from AppScale Systems and Packet.

First, though, some background. AppScale is an Amazon Web Services-compatible IaaS platform. It is basically the former Eucalyptus — “same code, same people,” AppScale says on its blog — after a years-long M&A saga that involved Hewlett Packard. Eventually, the inventors of Eucalyptus got their product back and have rebranded it as AppScale.

Packet, meanwhile, specializes in public cloud data centers and bare-metal automation. Together, AppScale and Packet are enabling enterprises to deploy AWS workloads on Packet’s bare-metal servers without modifying those workloads. The companies say this allows for use cases including development and testing, placing computation close to data, and moving workloads to the appropriate platform based on current application requirements.

AppScale’s Woody Rollins

Channel Futures wanted to know what this all means for the channel and get a better feel for AppScale’s plans for its indirect partners. In this edited Q&A, AppScale CEO Woody Rollins explains.

Channel Futures: Talk about what the Packet deal means for channel partners. What’s the significance for them and their ability to build their businesses?

Woody Rollins: Today, almost 60% of enterprises are driving a hybrid cloud strategy that aligns application requirements and platform capabilities. Many of these enterprises want to leverage their existing AWS investments and embrace a single AWS development and deployment paradigm across hybrid cloud environments (Gartner sees 20% of enterprise customers deploying an AWS hybrid cloud by 2022).

The AppScale-Packet solution, which allows deployment of AWS workloads on Packet’s bare-metal servers, is a significant growth opportunity for partners as enterprises look to deploy AWS hybrid environments; and at the same time, fulfill key business objectives: vendor independence, data control and cost effectiveness. The complexities of hybrid cloud deployments will push the majority of enterprises to enlist partners to help with the assessment, migration and management of these AWS public/non-public environments.

Partners who have invested in AWS expertise, hybrid cloud professional services, and who can deliver attractive solution options that address unique enterprise requirements should see strong demand as the market for hybrid cloud solutions based on the public cloud market leader accelerate.

CF: Can you provide a concrete example of what the AppScale-Packet partnership might look like to a partner? In other words, what kind of client would a partner target with this combined capability and what specific business-outcome value would the partner bring to the table?

WR: AppScale and Packet are looking for partners that offer a full range of hybrid cloud services (assessment, migration, management) that complement the joint AWS-compatible infrastructure as a service platform offering. Partners can target a wide variety of enterprise customers who have embraced the AWS public cloud, intend to deploy a hybrid cloud solution based on AWS technology, and who find themselves looking for a solution that maintains business flexibility, allows for control of business-critical data and ensures cost objectives are met.

Today, partners can start by helping enterprises with…