Cloud28+ turns its cloud catalog into an enterprise app store

Although HPE is the driving force behind Cloud28+, the federation of independent software vendors, resellers and service providers now has 225 members, which are pushing to simplify cloud software deployment.

The federation plans to open its new App Center for business later this summer, and will begin stocking its virtual shelves on June 7 with the opening of an App Onboarding Center. This will containerize workloads submitted by vendors and resellers and test them for compatibility, initially for free.

The workloads on offer will be more diverse than those contained in the original Cloud28+ catalog, as the federation is opening up to additional technology platforms. Once strictly an open source, OpenStack shop, it is now embracing Microsoft Azure, VMware, Ormuco and Docker.

Docker is key to the App Center's operation, in fact, as Cloud28+ has adopted Docker Datacenter as its containers-as-a-service framework.

"The value of Cloud 28+ is in multi-cloud with monetization at the edge," said Xavier Poisson, HPE's vice president for hybrid IT in Europe, Middle East and Africa, at a meeting for Cloud28+ partners on Thursday.

That monetization at the edge means that HPE, through Cloud28+, is providing a common way for cloud infrastructure providers around Europe to deliver software and services to end users.

Another of the federation's innovations announced Thursday is the introduction of a series of tools allowing vendors and service providers to market their services, generate customer leads and track their performance.

One of the advantages of Cloud28+ for participating service providers operating in only one country is that it makes them more visible to independent software vendors from other countries looking for new distribution channels, said Khaled Chaar, managing director of German cloud service provider Pironet NDH. That enables companies like his to offer their customers a broader range of cloud-ready software, he said.

Although many applications are already cloud-ready, for a typical business the 20 percent or so of the applications it uses that aren't cloud-ready are probably the most valuable, industry-specific ones, he said. Making it easier to move those to the cloud will present significant advantages, he said.