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Qlayer

Sun Microsystems Acquires Q-layer To Expand Cloud Offerings

January 7, 2009 by Toon Vanagt 3 Comments

Sun Microsystems just announced it has acquired Q-layer, a cloud computing company that automates the deployment and management of both public and private clouds. The 35 people from the Q-layer organization, based in Belgium, will become part of Sun’s Cloud Computing business unit, which develops and integrates cloud computing technologies, architectures and services.

With this acquisition Sun logically expands its existing cloud building blocks on top of its xVM Virtualization product range. Let’s not forget Sun already bought MySQL and VirtualBox to that effect last year. Sun keeps doing many cool things with technology, but seems to have a persistent problem to generate meaningful revenue from those acquisitions and development. We are curious to see if time will prove their puzzle just took a bit longer to fall together.

The Sun press release goes on to claim the acquired ‘Q-layer technology simplifies cloud management and allows users to quickly provision and deploy applications, a key component in Sun’s strategy to enable building public and private clouds. As businesses continue to rely more on technology to drive mission-critical processes, the agility of the datacenter determines the flexibility of the entire company. The Q-layer software supports instant provisioning of services such as servers, storage, bandwidth and applications, enabling users to scale their own environments to meet their specific requirements.’

“Sun’s open, network-centric approach coupled with optimized systems, software and services provides the critical building blocks for private and public cloud offerings,” said David Douglas, senior vice president of Cloud Computing and chief sustainability officer, Sun Microsystems. “Q-layer’s technology and expertise will enhance Sun’s offerings, simplifying cloud management and speeding application deployment.”

The terms of the deal were not disclosed as the transaction is not material to Sun.

Disclaimer: Q-Layer is the longest running sponsor of Virtualization.com

Filed Under: Acquisitions, Featured, News Tagged With: acquisition, cloud computing, Q-layer, Qlayer, sun, sun microsystems, VirtualBox, virtualisation, virtualization, XVM

Sun Microsystems Inks Bunch Of New OEM Agreements To Expand xVM VirtualBox Reach

August 12, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

—

Sun Microsystems today announced new multi-year OEM agreements with Avanquest Software, Q-layer and Zenith InfoTech to expand the reach of Sun xVM VirtualBox.

Sun xVM VirtualBox is available via the OEM program or in a free, open source version here. Since its release in January 2007, Sun xVM (VirtualBox) has surpassed 5 million downloads, and the company boasts about it being the first free hypervisor to support all major host operating systems, including Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, Solaris and OpenSolaris.

Sun xVM VirtualBox software, which it acquired through its maker innotek earlier this year, is a key component of Sun’s broader xVM virtualization and management software portfolio, which includes Sun xVM Ops Center, Sun xVM Server and the Sun VDI Software.

Avanquest will produce and publish Sun xVM VirtualBox bundled with OpenSolaris and sell it via retail outlets in the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and France. Beginning this fall, Avanquest will provide Mac users with a solution to run the Windows operating system through Sun xVM VirtualBox.

Q-layer is leveraging Sun xVM VirtualBox to deliver complete datacenter virtualization capabilities for its customers.

Zenith InfoTech has built its network attached storage appliance for small and medium-sized businesses using Sun xVM VirtualBox.

Filed Under: Featured, News, Partnerships Tagged With: Avanquest, Avanquest Software, desktop virtualization, free, Hypervisor, innotek, OEM, OEM agreement, Q-layer, Qlayer, sun, sun microsystems, Sun VirtualBox, Sun xVM, Sun xVM VirtualBox, Sun xVM VirtualBox 1.6, VirtualBox, virtualisation, virtualization, XVM, xVM VirtualBox, xVM VirtualBox 1.6, Zenith InfoTech

From Virtualization to Cloud Computing: Q-layer Launches Delegation Manager

June 30, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Q-layer, enabler of cloud computing through Virtual Private Data Centers (VPDC), today announced the Q-layer Delegation Manager, a solution that turns virtual server environments into a cloud computing platform.

The first release of Delegation Manager provides complete support for VMware Infrastructure 3 environments, including the VMware ESX Hypervisor, with future support for additional Hypervisors including Xen, xVM VirtualBox and Hyper-V. The Q-layer Delegation Manager aims to enable fast browser-based provisioning of data center assets for helpdesk, technical end-users and non-technical end-users, with integrated credit-based charge-back capabilities, reporting and flash-based management controls.

Q-layer’s Delegation Manager is installed through the VMware Virtual Center as a Virtual Appliance and builds on Q-layer’s VPDC and Datacenter Abstraction Layer (DAL) technology. It enables model-driven orchestration capabilities for data centers, including workflows to cohesively orchestrate virtual servers, networks and storage.

According to the press release, the Q-layer Delegation Manager augments existing data center infrastructure, including hypervisors, networks and storage devices. The system provides complete orchestration of these underlying assets to enable data center agility for cloud computing. To facilitate this ecosystem, Q-layer is also working with leading technology partners to create complete virtualization solutions for the next generation data center.

“With Q-layer’s Delegation Manager, end-users can provision and deploy a complete data center within minutes,” said Paul Speciale, vice president of product management at Q-layer. “Our technology has been proven in leading data centers, and leverages the capabilities of existing data center infrastructures to provide the most simple and extensible cloud computing solution for data center operators.”

The Q-layer Delegation Manager will be generally available in the third quarter of 2008. Pricing starts at $1,995 per node, for any number of Virtual Machines.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: cloud computing, DAL, Datacenter Abstraction Layer, Delegation Manager, Paul Speciale, Q-layer, Q-layer DAL, Q-layer Datacenter Abstraction Layer, Q-layer Delegation Manager, Q-layer Virtual Private Data Center, Q-layer VPDC, Qlayer, Virtual Private Data Center, virtualisation, virtualization, VMWare Virtual Center, VPDC

Video: Demo from Niko Nelissen, VP Business Development with Q-layer (VMworld Europe 2008)

March 4, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

The interview below is part of our Virtualization Video Series, a recurring theme we want to implement on Virtualization.com featuring interviews with key players from the industry, event reports, etc.

This interview was recorded at VMWorld Europe 2008 in Cannes, France, and features a demo by Niko Nelissen, VP Business Development with Q-layer, explaining the concept behind their Virtual Private DataCenter solution targeted at service and hosting providers.

DivX HD 1280×720 3.5mbit/s: Play (pop-up)
WMV HD 1280×720 3.5mbit/s: Play (pop-up)

Flash versions: Blip (embedded below), Dailymotion, Myspace, Putfile, Revver, Sevenload, Vimeo, Youtube

Update – transcript of the interview:

Q: What does Q-layer do?

We have a solution for service providers. A service provider can be a hosting provider, a commercial datacenter, a Telco, or it can also be an IT department of an enterprise where they service business units in several countries.
We have a Virtual Private Data Center concept, so customers of the service provider can build their own virtual datacenter using an easy-to-use web interface.
Within this VPDC, customers simply select the servers needed, e.g. a Windows server, a Linux server or a Windows Microsoft Exchange server, add them to the environment and connect them to a virtual switch to provide network connectivity. They can also assign storage, virtual SAN’s, virtual file servers, virtual routers, etc. basically building a whole datacenter environment. After clicking on the ‘deploy’- button, the environment will be live in under 10 minutes.
This is the alternative to racking physical servers, which would normally take weeks.
With our system, you have instant availability of a virtual infrastructure.

Q: Who is using this?

We close partnerships with hosting providers all over Europe. They use this to have a new offering into the market; they can provide a whole virtual infrastructure to their customers. They sell virtual capacity in the form of credits. We have a credit concept of storage -, network – and processing credits. This is what is sold to the customers, who uses these credits to build their own environment, whenever and however.

Q: The purchase of credits, is it standard or customized?

It is customized, depending on the business model of the hosting provider. Hosting providers can choose for themselves how many credits you need for a certain virtual machine, a virtual SAN, a Gigabyte of storage, etc.

Q: Will processor intensive applications affect other customers on the same hardware?

It all depends on the underlying technology that is used. Q-layer can be used on top of an existing VMware ESX environment. We also support other hypervisors such as Xen and VirtualBox.

Q: How much does it cost?

It’s capacity based. We also have partnerships were we go into the market together, it really depends on the size of your environment.

Q: How is it been here at VMWorld?

Great, we’ve been seeing people from all over Europe. We’ve also been able to talk with our partners, e.g. partners who create virtual appliances, firewalls and monitoring applications and we integrate these applications into our solution.

Interviewer: Tarry Singh
Video blogger: Charbax

Filed Under: Interviews, People, Videos Tagged With: Niko Nelissen, Q-Center, Q-layer, Q-SAN, Q-Store, Qlayer, Virtual Private DataCenter, virtualisation, virtualization, VMWorld, VMWorld 2008, VMWorld Europe 2008, VPDC

Q-layer Announces € 7 ($ 9) Million Round.

February 7, 2007 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Belgian based virtualization start-up Q-layer just announced that it has closed a € 7 million ($ 9 million) round with Wellington Partners, Partech International and Big Bang Ventures.

This funding seems to confirm the industry trust among venture capitalists that 2007 will be the virtualization break-through year and that there is room in this market for more than VMware, Xen and Microsoft.

After a € 1.4 million first round in May 2006, Q-layer announced that Munich-based Wellington Partners and San Francisco-based Partech International have taken the lead in a € 7 million ($ 9 million) investment in the company. The lead investor of the first round, Big Bang Ventures will also participate in this round. Q-layer plans to use the proceeds of this round to build up its market presence in the US and Europe. As a result of this investment, Bart Markus of Wellington Partners and Nicolas El Baze of Partech International will join Kristof De Spiegeleer (founder & CEO); Niko Nelissen (VP Business Development) and Frank Maene of Big Bang Ventures on the board of directors.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: BBV, Big Bang Ventures, microsoft, Partech International, Q-layer, Qlayer, virtualisation, virtualization, vmware, Wellington Partners, Xen

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