'Run any app on any cloud' is CliQr's bold claim

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1 'Run any app on any cloud' is CliQr's bold claim Analyst: William Fellows 28 Jan, 2013 CliQr Technologies' claim is a bold one: the Sunnyvale, California-based vendor says that its CloudCenter orchestration platform enables users to move, manage and secure any newly developed or existing application onto any private, public or hybrid cloud. The company believes it can move apps into the cloud both securely and without modification. The 451 Take Many such claims have been made before, but it's clear that an ability to make the on-ramp to the cloud smoother and easier could be an important success factor in this space. CliQr is ultimately offering a best-execution-venue control point, enabling users to take advantage of multiple clouds to meet different workload needs. Technology CliQr's CloudCenter Manager is a console for managing the lifecycle of applications on one or more private, public and/or hybrid clouds. It's not in itself a broker, but can be used to build a cloud-broker function. It provides on-boarding, testing and implementation, policy management, storage management, cloud application price performance and availability benchmarking, cloud account management, license management and security control. CloudCenter Orchestrator is CliQr's application/cloud abstraction layer and key IP, which has three components: App Orchestrator Templates, Cloud Orchestrator itself and cloud-specific CloudBlades. The App Orchestrator Template collection is common to and resides on all supported clouds. The Copyright The 451 Group 1

The company believes it can move apps into the cloud both securely and without modification.

2 templates enable a cloud's rules and behaviors for compute, storage, network and security to work with those of the application being moved into it. There are templates for Hadoop, batch processing, Web apps (beta) clusters and workflows. A Cloud Orchestrator is on each supported cloud running App Orchestrator it applies an application's rules and behaviors around compute, storage, network and security to work with the cloud without modification of the application. CloudBlades are packaged 'best practice' software modules (storage, network, security) on each cloud, and are used by the Cloud Orchestrator. Public CloudBlades currently available include Amazon, HP and Rackspace and private cloud support includes OpenStack and VMware. A CloudBlade SDK enables rapid CloudBlade support for additional private or public clouds. Features include: Storage management Enterprise Dropbox-like utility for moving data to and between clouds. Security end-to-end data encryption, key management and vaulting and network isolation. Benchmarking the ability to benchmark the application across any cloud to determine the best cloud based on criteria. Cloud accounts a consolidated environment that provides all accounting detail for one or many clouds including applications, users, usage, costs, etc. Secure service proxy (CliQr's CloudCenter Connect) CliQr says this supports extended enterprise environments that have active interdependent applications, data sources and services that may reside both on-premises and on the cloud. CliQr supports HP, Azure, Rackspace, Amazon, CloudStack, VMware and Google target clouds. Different strokes and brokers Unlike other migration tools and approaches, CliQr claims its approach requires no knowledge of the underlying cloud infrastructure, and specifically no scripting, recoding or new VM image creation. Copyright The 451 Group 2

A Cloud Orchestrator is on each supported cloud running App Orchestrator it applies an application's rules and behaviors around compute, storage, network and security to work with the cloud without

3 Other mechanisms include abstraction lift and shift. The problem here is that another virtualized layer adds another overhead up to 15% in CliQr's view. Moreover, this kind of migration requires that moving entire VMs means migrating the OS, the stack and other functions, and there is still no knowledge of the applications inside of the VM, so auto-scaling, load balancing or bursting can't be applied. CliQr's approach is designed to accommodate modern approaches for creating VM images on a cloud using Chef and Puppet, talking to cloud APIs. CliQr believes that cloud brokers will emerge and become important ways for users to procure cloud services; moreover, in two distinctive phases. The first phase is Hotwire brokering, with the broker aggregating and providing anonymous spare cloud capacity from any number of cloud providers. CliQr believes this approach will create the least friction with cloud providers by keeping the service anonymous, and help by consuming spare capacity, improving the cloud provider's utilization rate. In the latter part of this phase, enough usage behavior may be learned such that some of the early brokers may actually arbitrage and/or buy futures on spare cloud cycles. Phase two is Kayak brokering. Here the assumption is that both businesses and cloud infrastructure providers have accepted (to some degree) the, at least partial, commodification of cloud infrastructure and the fact that there is therefore a role for a broker intermediary. In this phase, the broker increases the intimacy of the relationship with the end user, along with making clear which branded cloud providers are offered. When the brands of the cloud providers are offered, CliQr believes it will enable providers to highlight higher-level services that may further differentiate them from other clouds. In both scenarios, the broker will need to make a decision about passing through SLA terms, or actually further differentiating itself by adding SLA or other terms that further de-risk the cloud experience for the end user. In part, this can be achieved due to the broker's ability to fluidly move workloads from one cloud to another, thus providing a blended SLA. Business model CliQr has raised a series A from Foundation Capital and Google Ventures, and has revenue of between $5m and $10m. It has 25 staff, and claims 15 customers, including five that, between them, have 100 applications on-boarded to the cloud using CliQr. The early use cases have been around HPC and big data, but CliQr claims it's now working on more general enterprise applications. Customers include RefleXion Medical. Copyright The 451 Group 3

auto-scaling, load balancing or bursting can't be applied. CliQr's approach is designed to accommodate modern approaches for creating VM images on a cloud using Chef and Puppet, talking to cloud APIs.

4 Competition They key competition here includes Verizon CloudSwitch, CohesiveFT, CloudVelocity, Apprenda, Engine Yard, Jelastic, Heroku, RightScale and VMware. CliQr believes its differentiation is that the user doesn't need to focus on fork-lifting VMs, but instead whole applications and without the scripting activity which CliQr takes care of. SWOT Analysis Strengths Weaknesses CliQr is reaching up for a high bar, touting any app on any cloud. A 'new' approach should compare favorably. Opportunities Threats Security and the associated risks of moving to the cloud remain the key concerns for enterprise end users smoothing the process and de-risking this activity from a technology point of view is part of the battle. Nothing suggests moving to the cloud is a walk in the park yet but the market is looking for answers. It's one of a handful of companies some smaller and many bigger targeting this opportunity. CliQr's approach needs credentialing and some momentum to be hard above the noise. Copyright The 451 Group 4

SWOT Analysis Strengths Weaknesses CliQr is reaching up for a high bar, touting any app on any cloud. A 'new' approach should compare favorably.

5 Reproduced by permission of The 451 Group; This report was originally published within 451 Research s Market Insight Service. For additional information on 451 Research or to apply for trial access, go to: Copyright The 451 Group 5

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