Univa UD has announced the general availability of Reliance 3.0, its leading application service governor product for cloud computing enablement.

Reliance provides the essential intelligence layer for cloud-based infrastructures, making informed and automatic decisions about where to allocate pooled computing resources to ensure application SLAs are consistently met. The 3.0 version signifies a new drop-in approach that allows users to implement service governance without replacing existing systems. Reliance 3.0 includes new features such as contention management among multiple applications or users, as well as exclusive provisioning for heightened security.

Application service governors have been described by analysts as the brains of cloud computing environments. According to Thomas J. Bittman, Vice President and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner, Inc., "the meta operating system only provides the muscles of a distributed environment. Another layer, called a service governor, will have to provide the brains, making decisions about where to allocate computing resources. Say you have five business units and 100 applications — some need ultra-fast performance and others don't. The service governor will decide which application gets what."

"Univa understands the challenges customers face in realizing their cloud vision, because we've been dealing with the same issues – scale-out, capacity on demand, services approach – for years via our grid and data center products," says Jason Liu, president and CEO of Univa UD, Inc. "We provide the proven technology plus the necessary incremental, low-cost approach for internal, external and hybrid cloud scenarios."

Univa is the only vendor to offer application service governance along with infrastructure management and provisioning. The company offers the broadest available set of cloud enablement solutions, including:

• Internal/Private clouds which optimize an existing infrastructure to gain cloud-style benefits while allowing companies to maintain autonomy and control
• External/Public clouds which leverage 3rd-party cloud services to outsource computing
• Mixed/Hybrid clouds which combine internal and external cloud approaches, extending a company's resources from private to public clouds on demand

Univa's experience includes deploying hundreds of production infrastructures and pioneering several of the first external cloud implementations. Univa works with companies of all types, from small businesses and large enterprises who want to leverage the public cloud to service providers who are building cloud-based offerings for their own customers.

Reliance is unique in its application focus and lightweight implementation methodology, which doesn't require companies to 'rip and replace' current systems as some cloud solutions do. It automates resource allocation based on application requirements to ensure SLA-based performance. Reliance plugs into an existing infrastructure and leverages monitoring and management systems to analyze performance issues and then automatically provisions physical and virtual resources as needed to protect customer SLAs.

A demonstration of Reliance 3.0 can be seen at the Univa UD booth #863 at Interop, Las Vegas, May 19-21.