Cloud Computing Brokers: A Resource Guide By Linda Leung Data center Knowledge January 22, 2010 —

Businesses are recognizing the benefits of cloud computing but are often wary of handing over their prized applications to public clouds for fear of insufficient security and lack of direct control, particularly with public clouds. This has spawned a host of cloud brokers to serve as intermediaries between end users and cloud providers. (Read more about this topic in Cloud Brokers: The Next Big Opportunity?)

Gartner defines three opportunities for cloud brokers:

• Cloud Service Intermediation: Building services atop an existing cloud platform, such as additional security or management capabilities.
• Aggregation: Deploying customer services over multiple cloud platforms.
• Cloud Service Arbitrage: Brokers supply flexibility and “opportunistic choices” – and foster competition between clouds.

To help you determine which cloud broker fits your needs, we’ve pulled together a list of cloud brokers and open source cloud management projects (in alphabetical order) with a brief description of their offerings. We will continue to update this list as new suppliers come on board. Have we missed someone? Send us your feedback.

Vordel
Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland with offices in London, Paris and Washington D.C., Vordel is an XML and service-oriented architecture appliance specialist. The beta of its Vordel Cloud Service Broker was launched in November 2009, and the service is scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2010. The service manages multidomain cloud services by registering them in a single repository to enable monitoring and policy enforcement. more ...