Apache CloudStack Matures With First Commercial Support Offering

LONDON, November 20, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --

ShapeBlue, the leading independent global CloudStack integrator, today announced that it will be the first to offer commercial support of Apache CloudStack.

ShapeBlue will offer professional, 24x7x365, enterprise grade support for IaaS infrastructures built on Apache CloudStack. The service will offer SLAs and is provided by an organisation that is a centre of excellence in the design and deployment of CloudStack infrastructures.

Giles Sirett, ShapeBlue CEO, explained: "For 12 months we've had increasing demand for formalised CloudStack support services. We support many customers but to date have not offered an SLA-based model. As Apache CloudStack adoption increases we see demand for a service that offers expert support - our customers want the benefits of open source, but also professional, responsive support as with a traditional vendor product."

"We can provide this because of the deep knowledge and expertise we have from building some of the world's largest CloudStack infrastructures, and also our capabilities with associated network, storage and compute technologies. We've developed a global support capability in order to offer the high service levels our customers demand. We have piloted the service with a number of customers and received overwhelmingly positive feedback."

Regarding ShapeBlue's involvement with the Apache CloudStack project, Sirett commented:

"We will be greatly increasing our contribution to the Apache project, with the creation of a dedicated CloudStack Software Engineering Team. Key to us is contributing all of our work back into the project. At this stage, we have no plans to offer a commercial distribution as we feel that this undermines the true value of open source software like CloudStack. Other open source projects suffer from fragmentation by participant vendors and we do not wish this to happen with Apache CloudStack."

The core support service will offer heterogeneous support for cloud infrastructures, guaranteed response times of 1 hour for high priority incidents, 24x7x365 coverage and a product patching service. Furthermore, a unique "Instant Guru" service will allow customers to discuss architecture questions and design changes using web-chat, outside of the formalised support structure.

Sirett concluded: "That demand has been created for this service demonstrates the momentum that Apache CloudStack is gaining. We work hard to make sure that we offer the highest levels of support, delivered by the best people. We are excited to be first in the market with this service."

SOURCE ShapeBlue