Makara Aims to Demystify Cloud Computing

Company:

Headquarters: Redwood City, Calif.

Technology Sector: Software

Key Product: Makara Cloud Application Platform

Year Founded: 2009

Number of Channel Partners: Currently none, just launched

Ideal Channel Partner: Managed Service Provider

Why You Should Care: Makara's Cloud Application Platform is designed to simplify moving applications to and managing them in a cloud, and the company wants to partner with cloud-savvy solution providers.

The Lowdown: In Hindu mythology, a Makara is a strange, almost indescribable creation that looks like a cross between an elephant and a crocodile. In information technology, cloud computing and its various components (Software-as-a-Service, virtualization, etc.) can be equally hard to define. So it's ironic that a startup called Makara would take on the task of simplifying cloud computing.

Backed by Netscape founder Marc Andreesen and former OpsWare chief Ben Horowitz, Makara launched publicly this month and unveiled its Cloud Application Platform, a self-service and self-managing Web application platform.

"The unique thing about Makara is that we're allowing people to take the application to the cloud and then manage it themselves," said Isaac Roth, co-founder and CEO of Makara.

Makara's platform-as-a-service is designed to help customers move applications to a cloud without having to change the programming language. In other words, customers can build applications and deploy them as if they were running in a conventional data center -- and the Makara Cloud Application Platform does the rest.

"Launching applications into the cloud can be very difficult," Roth said. "I thought it would be easier to move the applications, but we learned that it was a lot more difficult, and therefore put more effort into on-boarding the software."

Makara recently announced a major partnership with VMware, which will bring Makara's Cloud Application Platform to vCloud Express. Roth believes 2010 will be a big year for both cloud computing and Makara. "It's not all going to happen at once this year," he said, "but this is the beginning."