Nimbula 'Cloud Operating System' Nears Release

Startup Nimbula said its "cloud operating system" software will be generally available in the next 30 days, making it easier for enterprises and service providers to offer services similar to Amazon Web Services. The company says Nimbula Director, which is currently in beta, will allow customers to efficiently manage cloud resources on public clouds or in their company data center.

Nimbula, which emerged from stealth mode in June 2010, was founded by former Amazon executives Chris Pinkham and Willem van Biljon, who led the development of the Amazon EC2 public cloud service. "We made our beta software publicly available last December and have since been working with a strong, dedicated community of enterprise and service provider beta testers,” said van Biljon, VP of Products at Nimbula. “Their commitment and feedback has helped us prepare for our general availability in the best way possible."

The company also announced a lineup of partners, including Citrix Systems, Inc., Cloud Cruiser, enStratus, Opscode, Puppet Labs and Scalr.  Products and solutions from these partners will help deliver a turnkey solution to implement private, hybrid or public clouds using Nimbula's Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) software layer. The announcements were made in conjunction with the Cloud Connect conference in Santa Clara, Calif.

"With today's announcement, Nimbula is helping make the adoption of cloud a greater reality," said Pinkham. "We're building an ecosystem of innovative partners to help our customers adopt cloud computing. Orchestrating a strong and open partner ecosystem is the most effective way to successfully drive major technology transitions by bringing product answers to adoption and implementation questions."

For deployments on infrastructure under 40 cores, Nimbula Director will be licensed free of charge. A paid support option will be available for users of the free version. For deployments on infrastructure over 40 cores, Nimbula Director will be licensed on an annual subscription basis, and includes both maintenance and support services.