AppZero (formerly Trigence) is launching today at the DEMO 09 Conference a set of tools for creating Virtual Application Appliances (VAAs). This new approach to provisioning and deploying applications on physical or virtual servers running anywhere, is designed for the cloud environment and for movement of server applications — datacenter to cloud, hosting environment, or cloud to cloud. VAAs package a server application with all of its dependencies, but no operating system component (zero OS).
AppZero’s first public demonstration of its VAA technology will show a live production application provisioned in seconds to on an Amazon EC2 cloud, and moved in less than one minute to a GoGrid cloud computing environment.
Designed for instant server-based application provisioning and deployment, VAAs enable an application to run wherever the business requires without the burdensome licensing issues that inclusion of an operating system (OS) introduces – VAAs contain zero OS. AppZero VAAs work with mission-critical applications across all tiers: web servers, application servers and database servers. Enterprise middleware from Microsoft, Oracle, IBM and Open Source servers like MySQL as well as in-house developed applications can all be easily transformed into VAAs without changing a single line of code.
Cloud providers, integrators, ISVs and IT professionals find AppZero’s wizard-based tools simple to use for creating VAAs and provisioning them on servers at the click of a mouse. This instant provisioning allows scalable resources to be used on a pay-per-use basis, without cloud lock-in.
AppZero software creates, maintains, and administers VAAs. The key enabler of AppZero’s VAA toolset is isolation and encapsulation technology created at Trigence, an early developer of multi-platform datacenter virtualization technology. Under its new name, AppZero, the company is focused on extending the proven concept of virtual appliances to server applications. AppZero is led by CEO Greg O’Connor, who was previously the founder of Sonic Software (acquired by Progress Software NASDAQ: PRGS) and pioneer of the Enterprise Service Bus, the foundation of Service-Oriented Architecture.
AppZero VAAs encapsulate applications at a level above the operating system, turning server applications into discrete objects that run protected from other applications and the underlying operating systems. In a virtual environment such as VMware, Xen and Microsoft Hyper-V, AppZero drives higher server consolidation ratios by provisioning applications to virtual machines (VM) with almost no overhead. VAAs significantly reduces VM sprawl and dramatically speeds the time to get an application up and running. AppZero VAAs also simplify the use of existing configuration and server provisioning solutions, such as HP-Opsware and BMC’s Bladelogic, allowing these systems to manage server applications as discrete objects.
AppZero’s VAA toolset runs on Windows, Solaris and Linux and includes three tools: the AppZero Creator for building a VAA; the AppZero Director, a run time system; and AppZero Administrator for administering a VAA. AppZero has made available a library of single-click server based VAAs for free download at vaa.appzero.com. The VAA toolset is available immediately via the website and is priced from $500 per VAA.
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