Stratoscale's Symphony 3 enables AWS-compatible, hybrid cloud adoption

Earlier this year, #Stratoscale released #Symphony2, #cloud #datastorage software that promised the simplicity of #AmazonWebServices on the private cloud. Now, with its release of Symphony 3, the three-year-old cloud infrastructure company is targeting enterprises that are finally making the move to #AWS.

Symphony 3 enables enterprises to transform on-premise infrastructure into a hybrid and AWS-compatible environment.

"Cloud-native applications are rapidly becoming the standard, driving enterprises to build AWS-driven strategies for applications and data," Stratoscale CEO Ariel Maislos said in a statement. "The adoption of an 'all-in' cloud strategy, however, presents significant challenges as enterprises re-evaluate existing infrastructure and applications. Moving workloads between environments requires a detailed long-term plan and significant investments and adjustments."

Symphony 3 can be deployed within minutes, transforming any x86 server into elastic cloud capacity that's AWS compatible. It offers IT organizations simple single-pane control and ensures the data center will evolve with the public cloud. The software supports legacy applications using existing storage infrastructure, and it also facilitates new cloud-native applications, both implemented on an AWS-compatible Region that is created on-premise.

The new release brings new capabilities to Symphony's architecture, including object storage. That resides side by side with block storage on the same hyperconverged infrastructure. With Symphony's software-defined storage, admins can easily shift resources between different storage types.

Additionally, the new version offers fully managed Kubernetes-as-a-Service. Offering it as a service removes typical barriers, Stratoscale said, such as the need for hiring experienced talent and accounting for the lifecycle management overhead of Kubernetes.

Symphony 3 also offers access to an application marketplace with more than 130 pre-packaged stacks of enterprise applications. Users can install and deploy the entire application stack with just one click.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/stratoscales-symphony-3-enables-aws-compatible-hybrid-cloud-adoption/

Stratoscale ramps up its challenge to VMware and AWS

There's no question that #Amazon Web Services has set the standard for enterprise cloud services and that other public cloud providers are taking note. The startup Stratoscale, meanwhile, says it's gaining traction with customers who want the simplicity of #AWS without having to rely on the public cloud.

"What we're seeing today is people are trying to move away from the outdated #VMware infrastructure," said CEO Ariel Maislos. "They love what they're seeing in AWS -- they want to have more of that, but in their own environment, on their own terms."

Stratoscale has offered that solution since December with Symphony, a hardware-agnostic, hyperconverged software layer designed to manage a collection of x86 servers together as a single cloud infrastructure. Now, with a couple dozen customers under its belt -- coming from both legacy systems and the public cloud -- and $70m in fundingfrom backers like #Cisco and #Qualcomm, the three-year-old firm is rolling out an updated version of Symphony.

"In order to set up a cloud infrastructure, it used to be a huge project," Maislos said. "What we've managed to do in Symphony is transform it into a simple experience."

The updated version has new capabilities to support significant investments already made in storage infrastructure. It supports storage arrays from #EMC, #NetApp, #IBM, #Nimble, #Pure Storage, #Infinidat, #Oracle, #HDS, and #Dell. #Stratoscale has also added built-in data protection, ensuring the cloud infrastructure, applications, and data are always available.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/stratoscale-ramps-up-its-challenge-to-vmware-and-aws/