Run_any_app_on_any_cloud

'<strong>Run</strong> <strong>any</strong> <strong>app</strong> on <strong>any</strong> cloud' is CliQr's
bold claim
Analyst: William Fellows
28 Jan, 2013
CliQr Technologies' claim is a bold one: the Sunnyvale, California-based vendor says that its
CloudCenter orchestration platform enables users to move, manage and secure <strong>any</strong> newly
developed or existing <strong>app</strong>lication onto <strong>any</strong> private, public or hybrid cloud. The comp<strong>any</strong> believes
it can move <strong>app</strong>s into the cloud both securely and without modification.
The 451 Take
M<strong>any</strong> such claims have been made before, but it's clear that an ability to make the on-ramp
to the cloud smoother and easier could be an important success factor in this space. CliQr is
ultimately offering a best-execution-venue control point, enabling users to take advantage of
multiple clouds to meet different workload needs.
Technology
CliQr's CloudCenter Manager is a console for managing the lifecycle of <strong>app</strong>lications on one or more
private, public and/or hybrid clouds. It's not in itself a broker, but can be used to build a
cloud-broker function. It provides on-boarding, testing and implementation, policy management,
storage management, cloud <strong>app</strong>lication price performance and availability benchmarking, cloud
account management, license management and security control.
CloudCenter Orchestrator is CliQr's <strong>app</strong>lication/cloud abstraction layer and key IP, which has three
components: App Orchestrator Templates, Cloud Orchestrator itself and cloud-specific CloudBlades.
The App Orchestrator Template collection is common to and resides on all supported clouds. The
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templates enable a cloud's rules and behaviors for compute, storage, network and security to work
with those of the <strong>app</strong>lication being moved into it. There are templates for Hadoop, batch processing,
Web <strong>app</strong>s (beta) clusters and workflows.
A Cloud Orchestrator is on each supported cloud running App Orchestrator – it <strong>app</strong>lies an
<strong>app</strong>lication's rules and behaviors around compute, storage, network and security to work with the
cloud without modification of the <strong>app</strong>lication. CloudBlades are packaged 'best practice' software
modules (storage, network, security) on each cloud, and are used by the Cloud Orchestrator. Public
CloudBlades currently available include Amazon, HP and Rackspace and private cloud support
includes OpenStack and VMware. A CloudBlade SDK enables rapid CloudBlade support for additional
private or public clouds.
Features include:
❍
Storage management – Enterprise Dropbox-like utility for moving data to and between clouds.
❍
Security – end-to-end data encryption, key management and vaulting and network isolation.
❍
Benchmarking – the ability to benchmark the <strong>app</strong>lication across <strong>any</strong> cloud to determine the best
cloud based on criteria.
❍
Cloud accounts – a consolidated environment that provides all accounting detail for one or m<strong>any</strong>
clouds including <strong>app</strong>lications, users, usage, costs, etc.
❍
Secure service proxy (CliQr's CloudCenter Connect) – CliQr says this supports extended enterprise
environments that have active interdependent <strong>app</strong>lications, data sources and services that may
reside both on-premises and on the cloud.
CliQr supports HP, Azure, Rackspace, Amazon, CloudStack, VMware and Google target clouds.
Different strokes and brokers
Unlike other migration tools and <strong>app</strong>roaches, CliQr claims its <strong>app</strong>roach requires no knowledge of
the underlying cloud infrastructure, and specifically no scripting, recoding or new VM image
creation.
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Other mechanisms include abstraction – lift and shift. The problem here is that another virtualized
layer adds another overhead – up to 15% in CliQr's view. Moreover, this kind of migration requires
that moving entire VMs means migrating the OS, the stack and other functions, and there is still no
knowledge of the <strong>app</strong>lications inside of the VM, so auto-scaling, load balancing or bursting can't be
<strong>app</strong>lied. CliQr's <strong>app</strong>roach is designed to accommodate modern <strong>app</strong>roaches for creating VM images
on a cloud – using Chef and Puppet, talking to cloud APIs. CliQr believes that cloud brokers will
emerge and become important ways for users to procure cloud services; moreover, in two
distinctive phases.
The first phase is Hotwire brokering, with the broker aggregating and providing anonymous spare
cloud capacity from <strong>any</strong> number of cloud providers. CliQr believes this <strong>app</strong>roach will create the
least friction with cloud providers by keeping the service anonymous, and help by consuming spare
capacity, improving the cloud provider's utilization rate. In the latter part of this phase, enough
usage behavior may be learned such that some of the early brokers may actually arbitrage and/or
buy futures on spare cloud cycles.
Phase two is Kayak brokering. Here the assumption is that both businesses and cloud infrastructure
providers have accepted (to some degree) the, at least partial, commodification of cloud
infrastructure and the fact that there is therefore a role for a broker intermediary. In this phase, the
broker increases the intimacy of the relationship with the end user, along with making clear which
branded cloud providers are offered. When the brands of the cloud providers are offered, CliQr
believes it will enable providers to highlight higher-level services that may further differentiate
them from other clouds.
In both scenarios, the broker will need to make a decision about passing through SLA terms, or
actually further differentiating itself by adding SLA or other terms that further de-risk the cloud
experience for the end user. In part, this can be achieved due to the broker's ability to fluidly move
workloads from one cloud to another, thus providing a blended SLA.
Business model
CliQr has raised a series A from Foundation Capital and Google Ventures, and has revenue of
between $5m and $10m. It has 25 staff, and claims 15 customers, including five that, between
them, have 100 <strong>app</strong>lications on-boarded to the cloud using CliQr. The early use cases have been
around HPC and big data, but CliQr claims it's now working on more general enterprise <strong>app</strong>lications.
Customers include RefleXion Medical.
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Competition
They key competition here includes Verizon CloudSwitch, CohesiveFT, CloudVelocity, Apprenda,
Engine Yard, Jelastic, Heroku, RightScale and VMware. CliQr believes its differentiation is that the
user doesn't need to focus on fork-lifting VMs, but instead whole <strong>app</strong>lications and without the
scripting activity – which CliQr takes care of.
SWOT Analysis
Strengths Weaknesses
CliQr is reaching up for a high bar, touting <strong>any</strong> <strong>app</strong> on
<strong>any</strong> cloud. A 'new' <strong>app</strong>roach should compare favorably.
Opportunities Threats
Security and the associated risks of moving to the cloud
remain the key concerns for enterprise end users –
smoothing the process and de-risking this activity from
a technology point of view is part of the battle.
Nothing suggests moving to the cloud is a walk in
the park – yet – but the market is looking for
answers.
It's one of a handful of companies – some smaller
and m<strong>any</strong> bigger – targeting this opportunity.
CliQr's <strong>app</strong>roach needs credentialing and some
momentum to be hard above the noise.
Copyright 2013 - The 451 Group 4

Reproduced by permission of The 451 Group; © 2013. This report was originally published within 451
Research’s Market Insight Service. For additional information on 451 Research or to <strong>app</strong>ly for trial access, go
to: www.451research.com
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