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Lexmark announced a hybrid cloud management platform designed to deliver software quickly and consistently, regardless of location or workload.
OpenAperture supports Lexmark’s Perceptive Evolution platform, and equips applications to automatically and immediately distribute components across the globe.
This allows end users to interact with an application from the closest data center, reducing response times for individuals in any geographic location.
“The key is the ability to collaborate at levels never seen before. Cloud is a great enabler, and the various technologies we use allow us to work together like never before,” Bruce Wang, director of cloud services for Lexmark Enterprise Software, told eWEEK. “From HipChat to GitHub to Skype and Hangout, we are able to work together so much better. On top of that, having access to powerful cloud services like AWS or Azure has given immense power and capabilities to the development teams, but it is fraught with issues.”
Wang said with the burgeoning set of technologies, it becomes increasingly difficult to have a common framework.
OpenAperture automatically enables regional and provider redundancy, using complex scaling algorithms to ensure that applications maintain optimal performance at any scale, by re-balancing load across multiple regions and cloud providers.
“Security is on everyone’s mind, and you have to look at security from all levels. It’s not just about the infrastructure, it’s about the people, the code, the processes, the infrastructure and the applications,” Wang said. “Security has to be comprehensive, and creating a development lifecycle that has security from the start is important. With OpenAperture, we want to push best-of-breed security methodologies down to the individual level, and have it built in early to help influence good design and implementation.”
Wang noted that the software also helps segment the accounts and run the applications in the right context on the right accounts with the right permissions.
In addition, OpenAperture is open source software, which allows the platform to be used by others and enables Lexmark customers to benefit from code contributions made by the community.
“We have relied on the open source community to accomplish many things and we wanted to give back to the community,” Wang said.
“We see this as a way to share our thoughts around cloud management and areas we think many companies and enterprises struggle with. It gives our on-premises customers a way to run our services in their own environments, and take advantage of all the capabilities we’ve developed in the cloud, but under their full control,” he added.
“We definitely see this trend in the industry, both consumer and enterprise software companies contributing back greatly to the community, and this is a good thing,” he said.