With cloud provider Joyent's new SmartDataCenter cloud management software, which is scheduled to launch Tuesday, IT staff should be able to oversee both their private and public cloud deployments and not have to alter their previous software automation configurations, said Bryan Cantrill, CTO of Joyent.
"SmartDataCenter is the offramp to the public cloud," said Cantrill, who appeared at our Structure conference last week and gave a talk on the future of computing.
For Joyent, hybrid clouds are the way of the future, said Cantrill, and it's this combination of public and on-premise configurations that he believes makes Joyent stand out as a cloud provider against big, rich competitors like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform. A startup is more likely to begin its days operating in the public cloud and as it matures, it's likely to want to keep its data secured on premise.
Having the capability to move between on-premise and public clouds is important because the future is unclear over what will be the predominant standard, explained Cantrill.
"The economy is not going to be replaced by Netflix," explained Cantrill in reference to how legacy institutions like banks and those in the oil and gas industries will probably not be embracing the public cloud any time soon.
Cantrill said he is very aware of the competitive marketplace that Joyent is a part of and the ongoing storage wars that are taking place; he pointed out that Amazon (S AMZN) is "kind of a viscous competitor, as it turns out."
Earlier this month, the company detailed how developers won't be forced to sign contributor license agreements if they want to contribute to Node.js, the open source software platform of which Joyent is the corporate stewart.
Here's a video of Cantrill speaking at Structure last week:
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Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Shutterstock user wavebreakmedia.