EMC Improves Atmos Cloud Metering, Adds GeoDrive Linux Support

EMC Monday upgraded its Atmos Cloud Delivery Platform with enhanced cloud metering services and improved administrative reporting and controls. It also added Atmos GeoDrive support for Linux environments.

“We’ve seen tremendous traction and interest from both service providers and enterprises looking to deploy public and private cloud storage offerings, and both have benefited greatly from the new advancements built into the Atmos Cloud Delivery Platform,” said Mike Feinberg, general manager and senior vice president of the EMC Cloud Infrastructure Group. “Our customers are finding the less time they spend on provisioning, managing and billing, the more profitable their cost centers become. With our latest Atmos Cloud Delivery Platform release and GeoDrive for Linux, we’ve taken a significant step forward in terms of product, but more importantly our customers can take a significant step forward in terms of their business.”

EMC (NYSE:EMC) has packaged the new Atmos Cloud Delivery Platform 1.1 as a VMware VApp, which EMC said makes for a faster and more intuitive installation process that takes only minutes and a few clicks of a mouse. The new administrative portal adds lifecycle management capabilities that allow administrators to monitor accounts and take instant action on capacity requests, service level changes and account modifications. It provides self-service access, management and reporting capabilities on bandwidth and capacity usage.

The Atmos GeoDrive software allows users to access cloud storage through a drive letter akin to the internal drives on a client machine. While previously only available in Windows environments, EMC has added support for RedHat and SLES Linux platforms, noting that it extends customers’ self-service infrastructure by providing instant access to the cloud without having to write a single line of code. EMC said GeoDrive requires no API integration for Atmos-based clouds and includes a set of rich features and security capabilities that include encryption, compression and throttling.

“In a recent 451 Group survey, the two biggest barriers to cloud deployment indicated by IT professionals were change/learning and complexity,” said Simon Robinson, research director for Storage at 451 Group, which provides analysis and data on the technology industry. “Taken in sum, these two areas represented the top barriers for over 85 percent of survey respondents. With the availability of GeoDrive for both Windows and Linux, EMC is focused squarely upon tackling these barriers by simplifying cloud accessibility and usability. With noted enhancements to the Atmos Cloud Delivery Platform 1.1, EMC is delivering additional levels of speed, simplicity and automation to what was already a highly optimized solution.”

Launched nearly a year ago, the Atmos Cloud Delivery Platform is intended to help service providers build and monetize self-branded storage-as-a-service offerings and enterprises transform their IT functions into internal service organizations. One of the key features is self-service functionality that gives users and service providers the ability to create and monitor Atmos accounts without intervention from service providers or IT personnel.

Thor Olavsrud is a contributor to InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.

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