Greenbutton helps software providers transition to cloud computing
February 14, 2012
I’m a big fan of the work done by Weta Digital to bring to life films such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy. When a chance presented itself to speak with Scott Houston, CEO of GreenButton and former CIO of Weta Digital, I had to schedule time for a meeting regardless of the company or its products. As it turns out, GreenButton is doing clever things to make it easier for software suppliers to package and deliver functions to the cloud to help their customers.
Houston helped Weta Digital set up and run a sophisticated data center in New Zealand to support the digital content creation for the films. The data center almost couldn’t grow fast enough to support the timely implementation of Peter Jackson’s vision for the films. Once the films were finished, the next question was how to make profitable use of the equipment to support the needs of other companies…
Houston thought that making it easy for software developers to consume cloud computing services as part of their product offerings was just the ticket. So, he assembled a team of developers to create a framework that software developers to use to burst functions out into cloud computing services when their customers’ customers needed more computing resources.
The framework was supported by agreements with cloud service providers. GreenButton’s customers could use the application framework to add cloud computing features to their products. Customers of these software suppliers would be able to press a green button on their screen and have some or all of the computational load packaged up and sent off to cloud service providers.
The customer would be happy that their work was accomplished more quickly. The software partners would be happy because they would enjoy a new stream of revenue. GreenButton would be happy because they would have an attractive set of services and a software framework to offer.
GreenButton’s customers would receive some revenue each time the green button was pressed. GreenButton would maintain all of the relationships with the service providers and support the technology that made it possible for these software providers to easily add cloud computing to their list of available services.
Pretty clever.