ZeroStack Introduces Rapid Cloud Deployment And Automation Services

ZeroStack has learned a lot since launching a channel. Those insights from partners motivated the startup aiming to simplify cloud operations to roll out new capabilities Wednesday to further enable MSPs to deploy customized, self-service environments for enterprise customers.

ZeroStack CEO David Greene told CRN the trend the Mountain View, Calif.-based company has seen over the last nine months among enterprises adopting on-premises clouds is "there are just fewer that have the appetite to run that environment anymore."

That's driving a trend in the channel—resellers are looking to break into managed services practices, and existing MSPs are trying to modernize their services to meet the demands of enterprise customers.

[Related: ZeroStack Introduces Cloud Innovation Program To Help Partners Master The Sales Process ]

To assist those efforts, ZeroStack introduced click-and-go templates for rapid service deployments, and "self-driving" features to automate the management of complex environments.

"Templates with an upfront definition of what the service can be, running on a platform with a high degree of automation, lets you, as a channel partner, get customers onboard more quickly, get to market more quickly, and most importantly keep your margins up," Greene told CRN.

ZeroStack debuted four initial service templates: GPU-as-a-service, AI-as-a-Service, Big Data-as-a-Service and DevOps-as-a-Service.

The GPU capabilities allow service providers to tap a hot market as more workloads require specialized processors.

GPUs can be "an expensive piece of equipment to run, and not something you necessarily need all the time," Greene said.

ZeroStack's template enables MSPs to offer different users shared access to GPU-powered environments, automating the interface for customers to access those resources and tracking their usage.

The Big Data template can deploy environments from Cloudera and other vendors. The DevOps one can do the same for Red Hat's OpenShift container platform for application development. And the service for delivering artificial intelligence automates access to batch processing, distributed analytics, multi-player gaming, video encoding, IoT development, edge computing, and blockchain development.

Development of those four services was largely informed by partners and customers reporting "the applications end-users want to run, and what are the environments they want to run them in," Greene said.

"Part of our model going forward is to continue to identify these places where we can simplify automation and apply self-service," Greene said.

ZeroStack aims to tackle the problem of a how a "historically reseller-centric channel profits in a services and SaaS-centric world," Greene said.

Even a year ago, many thought the public cloud would render those services outdated. But that's proven far from the case, Greene said, as many enterprises prefer owning their infrastructure, exciting partners that "really see a place for themselves in this new world."

The channel has an important role to play in delivering value to customers that want to own their infrastructure, he told CRN.