AppZero in the Enterprise

AppZero™ positively alters enterprise economics across a range of disciplines, including:

• Server consolidation
• IT operations application lifecycle
• Application availability and disaster recovery
• Upgrade/patch and migrate
• Movement to the cloud

AppZero's software virtualizes server-side applications in a way that makes the provisioning of applications as services almost instantaneous: across a network on any server (physical or virtual), in the datacenter, or in the cloud.

In addition to great cost savings across an application's life cycle, AppZero makes it technically easy and economically sensible for line of business leaders to get IT services that map to the financial models they need.

AppZero works with an enterprise's existing application management solutions through industry standard interfaces.  Management is actually simplified because, by putting an application with all its dependencies in a VAA, AppZero presents a single file for existing solutions to manage.

Virtual application appliances (VAA) make a real difference in enabling movement of applications from development to QA to production; from server to server, on premise or in the cloud; from one version to another; from the datacenter to the cloud - and back if necessary.

Server Consolidation

Virtualization's appeal to datacenters with hundreds or thousands of servers -- typically with one application installed on each -- was immediate.  But what soon became apparent was that hypervisor technology, which is so good at separating operating systems (OS) from hardware, does little to change the server/application equation in production; The large in-memory footprints of virtual machines (VM) and virtual appliances (VA) impact application performance and quickly max out a server.  Therefore, server sprawl remains a problem with traditional approaches to virtualization, as does the underutilization of resources and the overhead to maintain them.

AppZero changes the server utilization equation. Isolation of underlying components (operating system, middleware, database, and browser) in VAAs allows multiple applications, with different system configurations, to coexist on the same server.  Although the VAA approach requires applications running on the same server to utilize the same operating system, different versions of that OS can be maintained on the same box.   The great flexibility in the types of system configurations that can be deployed simultaneously, means a three- to four-fold increase in the number of applications that one server can support.

• One AppZero customer reports a 66% reduction in server/storage footprint in their production environment.

Lifecycle speed and cost

Once an application is ready to move from QA to production, AppZero cuts the time required to install and reconfigure the new version from weeks or days to hours or minutes.  With VAAs, the deployment of an application upgrade or fix becomes as easy as drag/dropping a new VAA on a production box.  The VAA's complete isolation from the supporting technologies protects the application from adverse affects of inconsistent versions or environmental dependencies.  As a result, IT doesn't have to maintain multiple servers to support a single application's multiple versions, and can instead respond to the rapidly changing needs of the business units they support. The business gets the change it needs.

• A current AppZero client reports an 80% reduction in application lifecycle costs.

Application availability and disaster recovery

The cost associated with high availability and disaster recovery solutions leave many critical applications unprotected by clustering, failover, or any other recovery automation.  Hoping for the best, IT throws expensive talent at restoring an application when the worst happens.  With AppZero, an application can be restored in minutes or seconds rather than days or hours at almost no incremental cost.

VAAs stored off-line can be retrieved and restored in minutes, while applications stored in ready-to-run VAAs are deployed at the click of a mouse. Unexpected downtime is cut close to zero.

Statistically, the main cause of application down time is configuration errors, not disasters.  Because VAAs are pre-configured, applications are deployed with zero configuration mistakes.

Upgrade/fix and migrate

IT operations spend a major part of time and budget supporting business applications: install, update, monitor, and audit for compliance.  Repeat.  This job is complicated by continual change from updates to operating systems, application patches, and customization, made treacherous by the unpredictable impact a change in one element has on the whole.  By separating applications from their underlying infrastructure in VAAs, AppZero makes it practical to independently manage change to applications and OS.  For the same reason, migration to newer, faster hardware and OS versions can be accomplished without application rewrite or upgrade.  Migration is safe, fast, effortless, effective, and inexpensive.

Movement to the cloud - and back

Because a VAA only requires a compatible instance of a running OS, applications can be moved from within an enterprise's firewall to a cloud with no friction.  If an enterprise's application stack is based on Windows, AppZero is in fact the only way to move to the cloud without breaking Microsoft's licensing.

The fact that VAAs can leverage off the shelf VPN technology without altering the underlying OS on which they run, means that moving a VAA to the cloud will leave no data artifacts behind.  Enterprises interested in exploiting the economics of cloud computing can easily move applications to the cloud - and back again, if necessary - without cloud lock in.

If you would like to discuss how AppZero can help your Enterprise, please feel free to contact us at: info@appzero.com. You may also be interested in our white paper: AppZero turbo-charges server consolidation.