Sun Microsystems announced Wednesday it has acquired Q-layer, a cloud-computing company that automates the deployment and management of both public and private clouds. Cloud computing brings computer and data resources onto the Web for higher efficiency, massive scalability, and faster and easier software development.
Q-layer’s technology meets with Sun’s strategy to help companies build public and private clouds with tools that aim to simplify cloud management and allow users to provision and deploy applications.
“Sun’s open, network-centric approach, coupled with optimized systems, software and services, provides the critical building blocks for private and public cloud offerings,” said David Douglas, senior vice president of cloud computing at Sun. “Q-layer’s technology and expertise will enhance Sun’s offerings, simplifying cloud management and speeding application deployment.”
Data Center Agility
As businesses continue to rely more on technology to drive mission-critical processes, Sun is betting the agility of the data center will determine the flexibility of the entire company. Q-layer software supports provisioning of services such as servers, storage, bandwidth and applications, enabling users to scale their environments to meet their specific requirements.
Sun is working to position itself as an ideal adviser and partner for companies that want to build cloud computing within their organizations, and for companies and service providers that want to build publicly available cloud services. According to Zeus Kerravala, a vice president at the Yankee Group, this acquisition helps Sun’s case.
“This acquisition is a strategic move for Sun,” Kerravala said. “Clouds have become very popular. One of the things that’s always dismayed me in technology innovation is the management of network applications, servers and other stuff always comes two to three years after the stuff.”
Management Is Critical
Since much of the value of clouds is the ability to get the exact amount of resources to run a specific application or service when you need it,…