Cloud-in-a-Can

Cloud-in-a-Can or Cloud in a box is a single, turnkey product that facilitates a company to deploy a private virtual environment which is protected by a firewall. These products were created to bring down the expenses related to the setting up of cloud infrastructure. The private virtual environment allows authorized users, whose business departments are billed on a pay-per-use basis, to self-provision automatically.

Cloud in a can products are typically a mix of software and the right hardware required to run the programs. These products are business IT solutions that allow the client to be able to set up a private cloud in a short period of time. Also, they don’t have to build the infrastructure from scratch. Instead, they can just integrate the new software and hardware with the legacy systems – the existing databases and software. This kind of streamlining reduces the timeline of implementing and completion of a private cloud to a considerable amount.

Quite a few cloud in a can products offer software, pre-tested processing hardware, and storage with all the connections already in their place.

Some examples of cloud-in-a-can products are:

• Exalogic Elastic Cloud – this is by Oracle.

• BizCloud – this one is by Computer Sciences Corp. It is inclusive of software and hardware that can be deployed with ten weeks.

• Cloudstart - this is by HP. The company boasts that this product, which is inclusive of software, hardware, and services, can help a business become up and running as a cloud provider within a month.