Cloud Technology Partners eases cloud migrations
I was introduced to integrator Cloud Technology Partners a few weeks ago, when it introduced a service called PaasLane for helping businesses test their applications for cloud-readiness.
That service is fundamental to the Boston-based company's core mission: helping big companies move large-scale, mission-critical applications over to cloud infrastructure -- when it makes sense.
Like many other technology integrators that I've interviewed over the years, Cloud Technology Partners is limited in how much it can reveal about its clients. But it has published a series of case studies that highlight some of its capabilities. The bottom line is that the company has been involved with some of the biggest OpenStack and vCloud infrastructure deployments around, said Erik Sebesta, co-founder and chief architect and technology officer (CATO), for Cloud Technology Partners.
For example, the integrator designed the OpenStack environment for a global electronics provider that has 10 million customers worldwide (notably people that use its smartphones and tablets).
It has been more forthcoming with details related to an enagement for Diebold, the largest U.S. manufacturer of automatic teller machines. For that project, the company teamed with platform as a service (PaaS) provider Apprenda to optimize Diebold's portfolio of .NET applications and Microsoft software for a private cloud environment. The migration has enabled Diebold to dramatically reduce the amount of time it takes to spin up applications (squeezed down from 20-plus days to as little as five minutes). It also has helped reduce the company's licensing costs, according to Apprenda.
Cloud Technology Partners probably works with pretty much any major cloud infrastructure provider you can name, but it doesn't engage in reseller relationships with those companies, which distinguishes its approach from many of the solution providers assisting with cloud migrations, Sebesta said. It does, however, make it a point to engage in deep technical relationships, so that it can help businesses with "bakeoffs" that help determine which cloud stack might be the best for its application portfolio.
"In return, our partners introduce us to their prospects. They want to make sure that people adopt their products faster," Sebesta said.
I draw a laugh from Sebesta when I ask him if there's any such thing as a cloud "killer app" -- a particular pain point that is inspiring companies to consider cloud infrastructure approaches. "You will get 18 different answers from 18 different 'experts'," he said. "Think of it this way: the cloud makes sense for anyone with a huge, dynamically scalable global user base."
One of the biggest concerns for Cloud Technology Partners customers, however, is resiliency: the competitive pressures that require companies to ensure there is no disruption to their applications and technology services. "The pain today is greater than the perceive pain of moving to the future," Sebesta said.
Cloud Technology Partners' services include cloud strategy, cloud infrastructure construction, native application development, migration and business process transformation.