Scalr Scales Beyond Devops to Enterprise-Wide Cloud Governance

Scalr scales beyond DevOps to enterprise-wide cloud governance

Analyst: Owen Rogers 13 Feb, 2015

Scalr has added governance and integration controls to its cloud management platform in its 5.0 release as it looks to manage cloud consumption across finance, IT and operations. It hopes its new capability will give developers the freedom and information they need to make informed choices, while giving the C-suite peace of mind that security, cost and operations are being controlled.

The 451 Take

Enterprise-wide cloud needs enterprise-wide management. Giving developers freedom is great for creativity and productivity, but it's the CIO and CFO that own the burden of responsibility when this consumption gets out of control. This cloud sprawl isn't just a financial risk; it also makes the emergence of security holes more likely as resources are deployed without being locked down in jurisdictions that may breach data security protocol. Once sprawl has taken place, resolving the issue without proper tagging is a nightmare – how can the valid workloads be differentiated from the wasteful ones? Scalr wants to give developers the freedom they need to be productive, while providing the C-suite with peace of mind.

Context

Scalr is a vendor of hybrid-cloud management software that enables enterprises and service providers to control multiple public and private clouds. Previously, the company had a focus on DevOps enablement, allowing developers to utilize, choose and manage 'the best cloud for the job'; now the company has added financial controls and IT governance. We estimate Scalr to have mid-seven-digit revenue. Key customers include Expedia, Samsung, Accenture and NASA's Jet

Products

Scalr provides software for cloud management that is purchased through an enterprise license for on-premises deployment, or can be hosted and managed by the company. It also offers an open source version available on Github. Version 5.0 was launched in late 2014, and a number of minor updates have been released since then.

Through its new governance capability, Scalr's cloud management platform allows administrators to set policies regarding the management of cloud resources for specific individuals, projects or groups. One use case is for cloud cost-optimization by restricting developers to a limited range of virtual machines and automatically tearing down resources after a lease period, unless further approvals have been granted. It also provides security policies to be enforced by restricting developers to specific datacenters or locations, by forcing new resources to be attached to security groups or access lists, by controlling SSH keys, and by restricting deployment to specified virtual private clouds. Version 5.0 also includes a Java applet called SSH Launcher to aid SSH key management. The ability to enforce governance policies should also simplify IT operations by enforcing tagging policies on resources and executing Chef cookbooks when deploying cloud resources.

The company has also improved its cost-analytics capability in version 5.0. When we last covered Scalr, it had just launched its cost-analytics feature, which essentially provided chargeback and showback capability. Since then, this has been improved to give estimates of deploying a cloud application on a range of cloud providers, including CloudStack, OpenStack, AWS, Google, VMware and IDC Frontier. Through configurable price lists, the platform can provide developers with minimum and maximum costs for each cloud provider, based on baseline and maximum likely scaling requirements. Once deployed, the ongoing costs of the application can be tracked against this estimate, to ensure budgets are not being overrun. The company is aiming to give developers the best information to make informed decisions, without micromanaging them.

Scalr has improved its integration capability through a feature called Webhooks. It essentially allows a payload of data to be sent to a third-party destination when a certain condition is met. A typical use case might be to send an IP address to a monitoring service such as Nagios when a virtual machine is spun up, so it can be automatically set up to be monitored without manual intervention. The feature could also be used to track the IT estate growth through a CMDB such as ServiceNow. Webhooks provide external automation, while Scalr's Orchestration feature allows

Competition

There is a wealth of cloud management platforms in the market today, including Appura, Dell, RightScale, CA, BMC, CSC ServiceMesh, CiRBA, Copper.io, Xervmon, Ensim, Egenera, Ostrato, CliQr, Cognizant, CompatibleOne, Ensim, Gravitant, VMware, CloudMGR, Parallels, SixSq and Verio. CloudHealth is a service management platform that has similar cost and governance controls. Other DevOps vendors also represent competition, either in whole or in part, including Automic, CliQr Technologies, CloudVelox, IBM's UrbanCode, Stackify and UShareSoft. RightScale has a chargeable cost-analytics service as part of its cloud management service, following its acquisition of Scottish startup PlanForCloud.

SWOT Analysis

Strengths Weaknesses Access to a wide range of cloud providers together with The company is still relatively small and granular control and reporting is an attractive combination. bootstrapped, so scaling the business with growth may be challenging. Opportunities Threats Giving developers freedom is great for creativity and The market for cloud management and productivity, but it's the CIO and CFO that own the burden of DevOps enablement is a crowded and responsibility when this consumption gets out of control. competitive one. Enterprise-wide cloud needs enterprise-wide management.

Copyright 2015 - The 451 Group 3 Reproduced by permission of The 451 Group; © 2015. This report was originally published within 451 Research's Market Insight Service. For additional information on 451 Research or to apply for trial access, go to: www.451research.com