| Much attention has been paid to the powerful benefits | | | | Run-time multi-application and multi-cloud management |
| of public cloud and private clouds and other virtualized | | | | Eliminating the complexity of image management and |
| compute infrastructures. While the benefits of these | | | | virtual machine sprawl |
| technologies are powerful, enterprises attempting to | | | | Portability and avoiding lock-in |
| take advantage of them are confronted with the | | | | Cloud computing is in need of a much stronger and |
| crucial question, "What about my applications?" | | | | smarter regime of management tools and capabilities if |
| The application layer represents the 80% of cloud | | | | it is to become a widespread enterprise information |
| computing that all too often gets ignored due to its | | | | technology paradigm. As companies migrate their |
| inherently difficult nature. While deploying and managing | | | | heterogeneous applications to cloud-based |
| a single application in the cloud may not appear | | | | environments, they require a single point of application |
| challenging, the difficulties grow exponentially for | | | | management across the enterprise that allows the |
| enterprises looking to take entire portfolios of | | | | simple drag-and-drop of resources between multiple |
| applications skyward. | | | | cloud environments. |
| Enterprises won't embrace cloud computing until they | | | | Furthermore, cloud application management solutions |
| are capable of handling the numerous applications they | | | | should allow application extensibility, portability, unified |
| already have. To date, there has been a gap in terms | | | | and automated management, and include open and |
| of tools for managing multiple applications across a | | | | extensible APIs. It's only with these key attributes that |
| variety of cloud environments. Today's cloud is built for | | | | enterprises will truly be able to manage their application |
| single application startups. In order for enterprises to | | | | portfolios in the cloud and gain the peace of mind |
| view cloud as something more than an experiment, | | | | needed to fully embrace cloud computing. |
| they require an approach for migrating and managing | | | | Looking ahead there's little doubt that various forms of |
| more than one application. | | | | cloud computing will play an increasingly important role |
| Enterprises need a means of overcoming several key | | | | for enterprises seeking a competitive advantage. |
| challenges associated with application management in | | | | However, without a reliable and flexible means of |
| order to conquer their hesitancies toward cloud | | | | managing and migrating both new and legacy |
| adoption. | | | | applications across multiple cloud environments, the |
| These include: | | | | industry risks relegating cloud computing to an ideal |
| Migrating existing applications to dynamic cloud and | | | | rather than a true competitive differentiator for today |
| virtualized environments | | | | and tomorrow's enterprises. |
| Application deployment and configuration management | | | | |