rPath helps close the application deployment gap

rPath Initiative Aims to Close the Application Deployment Gap
 
White Paper Outlines Lifecycle Management Approach for Enterprise Application Virtualization that
Combines Deployment Speed with Control
 
RALEIGH, N.C. - October 28, 2008 - rPath today launched its initiative to close the application
deployment gap, proposing a lifecycle management approach for enterprise application virtualization
that combines deployment speed and control. The rPath initiative is detailed in the just-released
white paper, "Closing the Gap Between Apps and Ops: Leveraging Application Virtualization and Cloud
Computing to Accelerate Business Value," available for download at
http://www.rpath.com/corp/closing-the-gap.
 
The rPath initiative defines a new architecture to create and manage virtualized enterprise
applications for faster, simplified deployment on premises or in the cloud. Decoupled from their
operating infrastructure, virtual applications are self-contained images that can run on any
virtualization platform, effectively compressing deployment cycles from months to minutes. Once
deployed, the applications' lifecycle management and maintenance are dramatically less complex and
expensive, and the operational risks associated with security related patches are greatly reduced.
 
"The space between quality assurance (QA) and deployment is probably the most significant
bottleneck in the delivery of enterprise applications," said Billy Marshall, rPath founder and
chief strategy officer. "Bottom line, apps and ops just have different priorities. Apps is about
speed and innovation. Ops is about operating stability, compliance, and cost control through
standardization and stringent change management. Enterprise application virtualization eliminates
the apps/ops bottleneck while accommodating the priorities of both groups."
 
"For companies deploying production applications, speed, complexity, and heterogeneity continue to
be critical challenges," said Dana Gardner, president and principal analyst, Interarbor Solutions.
"Enterprise application virtualization really helps knock down the complexity problem and speeds up
deployment overall by keeping the focus on the applications. Application virtualization removes a
lot of the struggle around diversity of operating systems, programming languages, and hardware.
Instead, virtualization fosters business responsiveness and agility by providing a common and
inclusive applications deployment methodology."
 
Closing the Gap
 
The new architecture for virtualized applications sits between the traditional worlds of
application lifecycle management (ALM) and enterprise system management (ESM), providing a bridge
that dramatically accelerates production deployment. By facilitating seamless collaboration between
apps and ops, this architecture provides application development with the speed and flexibility
they want, while ensuring IT operations has the control and predictability they need. In doing so,
it allows organizations to dramatically grow the volume of virtual machines they're bringing on
line, while mitigating the risk of chaos and untenable maintenance burdens that always accompany
unmanaged growth.
 
"Cloud computing provides capabilities that allow all of us to become datacenter owners without the
complexity and headaches of actually owning and managing a datacenter," said Kate Keahey, a
scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, who leads the development of Nimbus, an open source
implementation of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). "The appliance management software developed
by rPath is helping us streamline the creation, management, and maintenance of virtual machines.
This will allow scientists to deploy appliances easier and faster and thus accelerate discovery and
innovation."
 
Detailing the Architecture
 
The new enterprise application virtualization architecture advocated by rPath includes the
following integrated platform capabilities:
 
·        Policy definition - providing capabilities for codifying policies that govern the quality,
conformance, and completeness of virtual applications before they're put into production.
 
·        Policy enforcement - automating conformance checks as part of the build process to ensure
virtual applications meet all preconditions for deployment.
 
·        Build management - transforming working software into a self-contained image that includes
all of the operating bits to run in any virtualized or cloud environment.
 
·        Orchestration - facilitating the "handshake" with deployment management systems, ensuring
the virtual application conforms to run time standards; and server capacity and network services
are available for a successful deployment.
 
·        Application maintenance - a scalable maintenance system that deploys updates to virtual
applications in production, enabling rapid response to security requirements and feature updates
and mitigating the risk of virtual machine proliferation creating unmanageable maintenance
burdens.
 
·        Lifecycle management - mitigates the risk of chaos and sprawl by letting companies manage
versions, state changes, history, ownership, policies, service level, charge-back agreements,
relationships and dependencies as part of the metadata package that travels with the virtual
application.
 
Simon Crosby, CTO, XenServer product group at Citrix Systems, says, "Citrix has been very active in
providing a virtualization infrastructure that enables applications to be rapidly deployed in the
enterprise and the cloud. We believe that rPath is playing an important, complementary role in
these spaces by promoting an application architecture that ensures rapid, controlled enterprise
deployments."
 
For more information on rPath, please visit http://www.rpath.com.
 
Recent News and Resources
 
Whitepaper: Closing the Gap Between Apps and Ops; http://www.rpath.com/corp/closing-the-gap
 
Cloud Computing Adoption Model; http://www.rpath.com/corp/cloud-adoption-model
·     News release: http://www.rpath.com/corp/news-and-events/259
·     Framework:  http://www.rpath.com/corp/images/stories/other/rpath_ccam...
·     Webinar replay:
http://searchvmware.bitpipe.com/data/document.do?res_id=1...
·     Analyst whitepaper:
http://www.rpath.com/corp/images/stories/white_papers/wp_...
·     Commentary:
http://blogs.rpath.com/wpmu/closing-the-gap/2008/10/23/th...
 
About rPath
 
rPath is the pioneer and leader in technology for virtualizing software applications and managing
the complete lifecycle of virtual appliances and application images. ISVs and enterprises rely on
rBuilder and the rPath Lifecycle Management Platform to automate the creation, configuration,
conformance, management and maintenance of application images for virtualized and cloud computing
environments. By producing application images that are optimized for any hypervisor, rPath frees
the application from the underlying hardware, and enables a more efficient, lower cost model for
development, maintenance and support and dramatically accelerates application deployments. rPath's
end-to-end technology simplifies the entire range of lifecycle management activities for
application images, while promoting scalability in response to dynamic demand. rPath is
headquartered in Raleigh, NC. Visit www.rpath.com.
 
rPath is a registered trademark of rPath. All other brand names and product names are trademarks or
registered trademarks of their respective companies.