Automation Key to Successful Private Cloud Deployments
October 24, 2011
In order to streamline their operations and cut costs, many companies are looking for ways to incorporate cloud computing concepts into their information technology (IT) structures. Automation is a big part of this.
In this context, automation refers to IT systems that essentially run themselves, with little or no day-to-day management of things like resource allocation, security, or workflow optimization. Self-service provisioning—the ability of users to access resources on their own, from any location—is a major component of automation…
All of these topics are familiar territory for Gale Technologies (News – Alert), a company that specializes in solutions for infrastructure-as-a-service delivery, private cloud deployments, and workflow automation for networking, server storage and virtualization.
Most recently, Gale Technologies has devoted much of its attention to updating its software for integration with FlexPod for VMware, a joint NetApp and Cisco (News 
– Alert) rack-based solution that delivers a virtualized data center.
The result, said Gale Technologies Corporate Strategy manager Bill Martinson during a TMCnet video interview with Erik Linask, TMC (News – Alert) Group Editorial Director, is a full automation solution for computer, storage, networking and virtualization in one piece of software.
Martinson stressed that automation is vitally important to Gale Technologies’ customers, who typically have gone through the consolidation and standardization phases of the lifecycle, as well as tackling the easier virtualization projects. Automation goes hand-in-hand with tackling more challenging virtualization components, and this is where Gale Technologies steps in to help.
A typical challenge is having a lot of legacy hardware and not being ready to turn that over. Gale Technologies offers solutions to take that existing IT infrastructure and turn it into a private cloud or IT-as-a-service environment.
“It’s about automating things that don’t necessarily have automation tools around them,” Martinson said during the video interview.
He went on to note that actually adopting private cloud infrastructure, and talking about doing so, are two different things. In fact, the term ‘private cloud’ is really more an invention of vendors than anything else; when you get right down to it, a ‘private cloud’ is simply IT done right.
“People in data centers are just trying to get their job done right by making the infrastructure as pliable and easy to use as possible,” Martinson said. “They’re always going to be doing that, whether they call it private cloud or not.”