Where does VMware and SaaS intersect? The Virtual Appliance Marketplace (VAM) is the answer. VAM has been around for some time now – over 2 years by my recollection. VAM started as a place for people who built virtual appliances to put them up on the web for others to download. VMware was the first company with such a site and is still the largest such repository.
Virtual Appliances are pre-built virtual machines with an operating system and application stack ready to go. Appliances vary greatly in what they’re used for and how “pretty” they are. There’s everything from IBM software stacks to pre-built virtual storage nodes to something as simple as a web browser. All you have to do to use one is download it and open it. This is why I say this is where VMware and SaaS intersect.
SaaS is usually talked about in reference to someone like a Salesforce.com. In the Salesforce model you log into a website, fill out a form, and an instance of the software is created for you – no installs necessary. Appliances are very similar. You log into VAM, find your appliance and download it, and your instance is ready to run. That’s the play for VMware in the SaaS space and it’s a strong one. The great thing about appliance is they’re easy to build and they work with any application you have to make it SaaS enabled.
Do you want to get started converting your applications to a SaaS model? It’s easy. Just get your apps loaded into a VM. You can use something like the free VMware Converter to do that. Next, download and use the free VMware Studio to convert those VMs into virtual appliances. Presto! You have service enabled your application. Wasn’t that easy?
As you can see, VMware plays in more than just the IaaS stack. In the future I’ll shed some light on how VMware impacts the PaaS stack.
April 7th, 2009 at 8:40 am
[...] Appliance Marketplace v2 VMwarePost by Mike DiPetrilloAdd comments In my previous post I talked about how the Virtual Appliance Marketplace (VAM) is VMware’s play in the SaaS [...]
April 9th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
The appliance model has some parallels with SaaS ease of deployment benefits but allows more control of the security aspects – however I would argue it is not a simple as just downloading the virtual appliance since it still needs to be installed on your VMWare infrastructure – which is relatively simple – but it also needs to be managed and tracked in any efficient production environment. Since the KBOX appliance focuses on systems management we’ve taken that message to heart in our definition of an appliance and built in “self management”. This covers areas like self tuning for load distribution and automating typical maintenance tasks such as nightly backups. So IT can focus on using the appliance to complete their work rather than creating more admin tasks. Again this brings the appliance model even closer to SaaS without the security issues.
April 10th, 2009 at 2:25 am
Mark,
the fundamental difference, in my opinion, is that with SalesForce (or alike) the application doesn't run in your own data center but rather “somewhere else”. Virtual Appliances are just a (very clever) mean to repackage an application for smarter distribution.
I guess that instantiating a Virtual Appliance on the Cloud would be much closer to SaaS.
Massimo.
April 10th, 2009 at 8:25 am
Mark,
the fundamental difference, in my opinion, is that with SalesForce (or alike) the application doesn't run in your own data center but rather “somewhere else”. Virtual Appliances are just a (very clever) mean to repackage an application for smarter distribution.
I guess that instantiating a Virtual Appliance on the Cloud would be much closer to SaaS.
Massimo.