EU-Funded Open Source Project OPTIMIS to Release Service Provider Cloud Toolkit

The European Union-funded open source project OPTIMIS will release its first version on June 1, 2012. European service providers can download the toolkit to help build and run applications in the cloud.

According to the announcement on Monday, the software toolkit will enable service providers to build service policies and virtual machines, as well as make deployment and infrastructure decisions based on trust, risk, eco-efficiency and cost.

Services can be deployed across private, hybrid, federated or multi-cloud environments.

Recent Gartner research shows public cloud services adoption increased 22.9 percent in 2011, and this toolkit will help drive that number as more European SMBs create cloud applications and services.

The toolkit is a component of the EU-wide strategy on cloud computing, which aims to extend EU’s research support and strengthen the technical standardization of APIs and data formats, and includes pilot projects support aiming at cloud deployments.

“The European digital Internet economy is already bigger than Belgium’s national economy and growing faster than the Chinese economy,” Neelie Kroes, vice president of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda said in a speech in COSAC Conference in Copenhagen last month. “Already worth hundreds of billions of euros, in a few years, it could reach over 5 percent of EU GDP. In some Member States it’s already higher. And by 2016, online spending could account for over one retail euro in ten.”

Csilla Zsigiri, director of consulting services EMEA at 451 Research and project spokesperson says that the OPTIMIS project is an important part of Kroes cloud initiative.

“This cloud strategy goes beyond a policy framework by stimulating new research and innovation, and the creation of pan-European partnerships to create better cloud environments and give European businesses, especially SMBs, a platform on which to innovate with new products and services,” Zsigri said in a statement.

While the launch is in June, the beta version has been tested by cloud providers involved in the project like Atos, Flexiant and Arsys. Ana Juan, head of service engineering and IT platforms lab at Atos says the OPTIMIS toolkit helps to eliminate the risks in building cloud environments, and hopes that more European SMBs will create new cloud applications and services.

According to the press release, the OPTIMIS programming component allows developers to define service elements and provides automation for creating VMs. The toolkit optimizes the deployment of the VMs to the service provider’s preferred infrastructure.

Once live, the service provider can continue to monitor, change and optimize the various configurations.

The toolkit incorporates data protection requirements, which Zsigiri is not only important in Europe, but worldwide.

Open source cloud toolkit‎ launched by Optimus Project

EU-funded project to help European cloud providers build apps for the cloud
An open source toolkit has been launched to help European service providers build and run applications in the cloud.

The EU-funded Optimis project was created to help service providers build service policies, virtual machines, and make deployment and infrastructure decisions based on four key factors - trust, risk, eco-efficiency and cost (TREC).  It gives service providers the choice of deploying services across all types of cloud environments – private, hybrid, cloud-bursting, federated or multiple clouds.

The Optimis programming component allows developers to define service elements and automatically create virtual machines. Using the TREC optimisation engine, the toolkit manages the deployment of the VMs to the service provider’s preferred infrastructure.

Another component, the Optimis broker, manages the infrastructure selection and service deployment by automatically evaluating infrastructure providers based on the service provider’s preference. These deployments can even occur across multiple cloud infrastructures if an evaluation by the provider determines that would deliver the best result.

Once the service is live, the toolkit allows the service provider to continue to monitor, change and optimise the various configurations at runtime.

Csilla Zsigri, director of consulting services EMEA, at 451 Research and project spokesperson said that the open source cloud toolkit was an important part of an EU-wide cloud initiative.

“This cloud strategy goes beyond a policy framework by stimulating new research and innovation, and the creation of pan-European partnerships to create better cloud environments and give European businesses, especially SMBs, a platform on which to innovate with new products and services,” said Zsigli.

The beta version of the toolkit has been tested by some of the cloud providers and IT services firms involved in the project, such as Atos, Flexiant and Arsys in collaboration with major supercomputing centres such as the University of Stuttgart (HLRS) and Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC).

“The beta version has given us an indication of the potential benefits of this toolkit. At this stage, the beta version has been able to select best deployment venues based on the application’s TREC requirements,” said Ana Juan, head of Service Engineering and IT platforms Lab at Atos.

“The Optimis toolkit helps eliminate the risks involved in building cloud environments and we hope this will encourage more European SMBs to create new cloud applications and services,” added Juan.

Version one of the toolkit will be available on 1 June 2012 for download from the Optimis web site.