DT spin-off Zimory opens up cloud computing

On Monday Zimory, a spinoff of Deutsche Telekom, announced its Public Cloud, an online marketplace for buying and selling computing resources. The effort uses open source tools to bring enterprises into the (cloud) fold.

Public Cloud allows sellers to aggregate their server computing capacity from around the world and make it available through an Internet trading platform. Buyers can buy capacity as needed without long-term contracts; they can select from a range of options, including a simple OS to a fully-configured application stack. Geographic location and quality of service is also available for review.

As the middleman, Zimory handles pricing, contracts, security, virtual machine migration and billing. The company has standardized service level agreements (SLAs) for buyers and sellers, so they can select from three types of availability.

In building a marketplace for cloud computing, Zimory uses gobs of open source code for both its development and the client-side agent that aggregates computing resources. In theory and depending on its needs, an enterprise could be a buyer of cloud time one week and a seller of time the following week.

Zimory has been in a private closed beta for the past several months and reportedly has a few hundred customers. The company has been in discussions with data centers around the globe to tap into under-utilized resources.

Interestingly, the company doesn't see itself in competition with Amazon's EC2, Sun's Grid or other services. Instead, they want to partner with those firms and help enterprise companies "have a gateway" to access cloud computing resources.

For more:
- Zimory officially announces Public Cloud. Release [1].
- More details provided through InternetNews.com. Article [2].