Makara turns the cloud into a virtual layer

Several months back, I spoke with Issac Roth, CEO of platform-as-a-service start-up WebappVM, about taking advantage of the cloud by moving to a virtual layer approach.

The idea behind this virtual layer is to enable developers to easily take Web applications to cloud environments--be they private, public, hybrid, or elsewhere in the ether.

On Tuesday, Roth and company are announcing the developer edition for their Cloud Application Platform with a newer, catchier name: Makara.

According to Roth, developers want to be able to get their apps up and running quickly but haven't had the ability to do so previously. They've just been copying data center deployment architecture wholesale to the cloud. But this kind of quick and dirty transfer ends up adding unnecessary manual labor.

Instead of retrofitting system management software designed for traditional application environments, developers can leverage the virtual layer to allow developers to deploy, scale, and monitor applications in cloud environments--with an emphasis on speed and ease.

Using the Makara Cloud Application Platform, developers don't need to rewrite applications specifically for deployment in the cloud. You simply place your existing program into the Cloud Application Platform capsule and launch it into the cloud. No code changes and no new development are necessary, according to the company.

Once deployed, the Cloud Application Platform sits on top of the hypervisor and under the application stack. This means maximum flexibility when it comes to porting it across cloud and virtual environments. Developers can provision across clusters without problem and even move between cloud providers with one click.

While there is no doubt that Makara and others targeting the space still have a lot of work to do, this new application delivery model provides a glimpse of a future where the underlying infrastructure becomes as much of a commodity as the hardware it runs on.