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Enterprise "app stores" in the cloud

The recent 3TERA AppStore announcement is the latest example of the software systems marketplace enabled by virtualization and cloud computing. How much of your future IT will be "preconfigured" for the cloud?

James Urquhart

James Urquhart is a field technologist with almost 20 years of experience in distributed-systems development and deployment, focusing on service-oriented architectures, cloud computing, and virtualization. James is a market strategist for cloud computing at Cisco Systems and an adviser to EnStratus, though the opinions expressed here are strictly his own. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET.

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James Urquhart

May 26, 2009 1:59 p.m. PT

2 min read

In conjunction with the well attended Interop and Enterprise Cloud Summit conferences in Las Vegas this week, cloud infrastructure and service vendor 3TERA announced the 3TERA AppStore, an online portal containing a variety of "cloud ready" components for use on their AppLogic platform. This is the latest commercialization of cloud image stores, and another example of how cloud computing enables marketplaces that were difficult or impossible to do before.

One of the earliest example of this trend comes from none other than Amazon, which provided a commercial payment system (called DevPay) for their Amazon Machine Image store some time ago. What has come of that experiment is in fact an amazing adoption rate for even some of the biggest software system companies in the business, including Oracle and IBM.

Others are working to catch up in this space as well. I know that at least one of the major IaaS providers and one of the cloud management vendors are working to make a play in this space. Getting people to buy pre-configured, pre-architected enterprise software to run in various cloud platforms is going to be an integral part of the cloud experience, and probably a very profitable one.

The 3TERA offering focuses, of course, on their platform, but AppLogic is one of a few platforms that take a true "virtual data center" approach to the problem. Sun's new cloud is another. My gut tells me that these guys have a bit of an advantage when it comes to "packaging" enterprise apps for the clouds, as they can easily include network and storage with the server architecture in one SKU.

Initial AppStore partners include CohesiveFT, Layer 7 Technologies, SOASTA, Tap In Systems, and Zeus Technology.