Intel® Cloud Builder program enables easier deployment of cloud solutions. Developed with leading cloud independent software vendors (ISVs), the program provides a starting point to setup, deploy and manage a cloud infrastructure.  The Intel Cloud Builder program produces materials, including documented reference architectures and best known methods on how to build and operate a cloud by running the ISV software stack on a test bed hosted by Intel.

The primary goal is to simplify the effort to deploy cloud-based solutions for service providers, hosters and enterprise customers looking to use cloud architectures. The program provides tools and best practices for cloud service providers to create a cloud environment based on a defined software and hardware stack.

Intel® Cloud Builder solutions provide an easy starting point to build a cloud environment based on a basic hardware blueprint and using available cloud software management solutions to manage the resource pools. These solutions provide a defined starting point and over time will take advantage of future Intel technologies and industry software solutions to address ISV’s needs such as trusted multi-tenancy and power management.

Service providers and hosters want to innovate where they will get the greatest return. Intel eliminates time-consuming back-end work by providing tools that helps service providers and hosters start from a documented solution.  Based on the test bed methodology, the program provides design specifications, APIs, and best practice information for the industry at large.

Industry leading ISVs have joined the Intel® Cloud Builder program:

“Canonical sees the Intel Cloud Builder program as an invaluable baseline for anyone who is looking to rapidly deploy a cloud solution stack. Canonical is passionate about providing the latest, most stable value-adding technologies for their end-users," said Simon Wardley, software services manager for Canonical. "The Intel Cloud Builder program will open a new world of innovation for service providers and we look forward to working with Intel to develop cloud reference solutions."

"Our participation in the Intel Cloud Builder program will provide customers access to a stable, tested starting point for deploying cloud infrastructures built on state of the art Intel Xeon hardware and cloud solutions from Citrix" said Simon Crosby, CTO, Datacenter and Cloud Division, Citrix Systems, Inc.  “Citrix will further build on these reference architectures to enable our customers to deliver scalable cloud services."

“Microsoft and partners deliver a wide range of solutions for customers to design, deploy and manage highly virtualized and scalable cloud computing environments so they can streamline costs in the datacenter and accelerate business solutions,” said Mike Neil, general manager of Windows Server and Server Virtualization, Microsoft Corp. “We are working with the Intel Cloud Builder program to provide reference architectures to help our mutual customers build an optimized foundation for private and public cloud computing with Microsoft software and Intel Xeon processor-based servers.”

"Parallels works with thousands of service provider partners and believes the Intel Cloud Builder program is valuable for those partners who are deploying a cloud solution stack," said Bryan Goode, Parallels VP of Business Development. “The Intel Cloud Builder Program enables service and hosting providers to optimize the deployment of Parallels’ automation and virtualization stacks on massive numbers of Intel® Xeon servers."

"Based on our experience with open source adoption among early cloud deployments, Red Hat is perceived by many as a trusted thought leader in both public and private cloud build outs.  Our customers are looking for proven configurations of the cloud stack:  hardware configurations combined with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise Middleware," said Mike Evans, vice president, Corporate Development at Red Hat.  "We are happy to team with Intel on the Intel Cloud Builder program to provide guidance and reference architectures to help optimize deployment on Intel(r) Xeon 5500 Series platforms for scale, multi-tenancy and lower TCO."

"Whether you are a service provider rolling out cloud services or an organization consuming them, the Intel Cloud Builder program provides the reference solutions to quickly get up and running," said Gary Tyreman, SVP Products and Alliances at Univa UD.  "By publishing private, hybrid and public cloud solutions validated on Intel architecture, Univa will provide our service provider partners and customers a recipe for cloud implementation that will reduce costs and increase performance and efficiency.

“For service providers and enterprises exploring building public and private clouds leveraging the VMware platform, the Intel® Cloud Builder Program offers guidance on analyzing and evaluating ‘best of breed’ VMware vSphere and Intel based solutions, simplifying design decisions, and providing basic functionality validation” said Raghu Raghuram, GM, Server Business at VMware."

"The Intel Cloud Builder reference architecture program will help drive open source cloud platform adoption while enabling customers to take advantage of leading Intel architecture datacenter products and technologies" said Ian Pratt, founder and chairman, Xen.org. "This announcement aligns well with the Xen Cloud Platform initiative, a complete open source Infrastructure as a Service stack which can be combined with orchestration and management software from other projects - such as Eucalyptus - to deliver a complete open source 'cloud in a box.”

Check out Billy Cox Blog on Intel Cloud Builder.

Watch this space for recipes & blueprints as they become available starting in Q1 ’10.  For additional details, please contact: intelcloudbuilder@intel.com

You can also check out The Intel in Cloud Computing wiki for lots of good resources on what's happening in the cloud.