Horizon Data Center Solutions has completed the full integration of VMware's vCloud Director, adding new capabilities to its vStructure enterprise-class Infrastructure as a Service offering. For many existing VMware customers, including those using vSphere, this introduces an entirely new means of deploying, provisioning and managing the capacity of virtual environments.
"Traditionally, customers would come to providers like Horizon and create a new environment within our vStructure IaaS platform to complement their own internal virtualization efforts. They would then have two completely separate environments to manage and maintain," says Lance Black, Chief Executive Officer of Horizon. "VMware's vCloud Director allows a paradigm shift in that equation. Customers now can acquire a pool of resources from Horizon and manage those resources as their own from their existing management console. It's truly an extension of their own environment. That's game-changing."
VMware vCloud Director is a software solution at the data center level that makes secure, multi-tenant private clouds available by pooling the infrastructure resources into virtual datacenters that businesses can access through web portals. The software makes it possible for IT organizations to supplement their internal business units with external capacity upon demand from a desktop application.
"Businesses want the ability to expand and contract their resources based on their internal data needs or external promotions or traffic demands. Horizon can now provide that external capacity in a way that is seamlessly tied to existing virtualized environments," Black says. "It puts functionality and control into the hands of the enterprise and sets Horizon up as a pure IaaS play, which is perfect for both parties."
Black says organizations will also benefit from the ability to use vCloud Director in conjunction with virtual disaster recovery. "It's not only a great option for extending and scaling production environments - the ability to scale resources makes it very appealing for standing up virtual DR environments that sit in storage until needed. When required, the disaster recovery environment can be activated and managed from the same management console."
Horizon is a leader in providing virtualized cloud computing technologies to both businesses and government entities. The company is one of just 11 providers of cloud computing services to the GSA, and it is the first cloud computing provider on the Government's SEWP IV procurement contract. Black says cloud computing helps to reduce costs for hardware and infrastructure and increase efficiencies in the government.
In addition to providing government cloud computing, Horizon works with businesses of all sizes, from the small to medium sized business with fluctuating capacity needs to major corporate entities with massive operations. Horizon's IaaS offering is supported by a network of world class data centers located in Dallas, Texas and Northern Virginia.