EMC today announced the Atmos Cloud Delivery Platform, which the company claims can significantly decrease the amount of time it takes service providers and enterprises to build cloud storage, or storage-as-a-service, platforms. The Cloud Delivery Platform is a software-only solution that works only with EMC’s underlying Atmos software and hardware.
EMC officials claim that the “cloud enablement platform” allows companies to deploy cloud storage services in a matter of days, as opposed to the months that would typically be required.
Jon Martin, director of product management and marketing in EMC’s Cloud Infrastructure Group, cites two examples of early adopters that were able to build and deploy cloud storage services offerings in less than 60 days.
Martin says that the Cloud Delivery Platform differs from competing platforms in that it provides self-service functionality so that users and service providers’ customers can create and monitor Atmos accounts without any intervention by IT personnel or services providers. The self-service functionality also enables user identity provisioning, as well as chargeback (for private clouds) and billing integration (for private and public clouds).
A metering module in the Cloud Delivery Platform measures bandwidth and storage capacity consumption at a granular (user) level.
EMC also introduced a portal with the Cloud Delivery Platform for companies that do not already have a portal.
As part of the announcement, EMC also introduced new multi-tenancy enhancements for the Atmos Cloud Storage Infrastructure, including network-level separation.
“Previously, Atmos customers could separate departments, applications and customers from a data access and management, or administration, perspective,” says Martin. “Now they can logically segregate tenants’ network access.” The advantages, according to Martin, are increased security and operational efficiencies.
EMC claims to have shipped more than 40PB under the Atmos program. Of its existing customers, 53% are service providers, 21% are in the media market, 10% in government and 8% in healthcare.
