StackIQ: Big Data and the Cloud Demand "Warehouse-Grade" Automation

“Warehouse-grade” automation is the key to the future of big data and distributed computing. So says infrastructure provider StackIQ, which today has rebranded its products and unveiled new automation features for Docker and other technologies that it believes will be crucial to next-generation enterprise data centers.

StackIQ specializes in helping to design, deploy and manage distributed computing infrastructure and private clouds. That focus remains the same, but the company is now retooling its emphasis to pitch warehouse-grade automation features as the center of successful data centers.

The company’s interpretation of warehouse-grade automation, which it described in a whitepaper released Feb. 9, means automation features that make large-scale, repetitive tasks ultra-efficient. An example is what StackIQ calls Pallets, formerly known as StackIQ Rolls. The Pallets feature is designed to allow data and other resources to move between systems within the data center as quickly as physical pallets allow brick-and-mortar establishments to transport, load and unload goods.

StackIQ has also rebranded its Cluster Manager software as StackIQ Boss, which is supported by a programmatic framework called Wire. The rechristening of the company’s products accompanies the release of version 5 of its platform, which adds support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and, by extension, Docker containerization, a native part of the latest RHEL release. The release also introduces new features for automatically configuring disk arrays and host identifications, Hadoop and Puppet, the open source automation framework.

“Boss 5 extends our full stack server automation capabilities to Docker containers as well as enhancing all of our Hadoop and OpenStack solutions,” said Tim McIntire, CEO and co-founder, StackIQ Inc. “We are bullish on big data and thrilled about helping customers accelerate deployment of infrastructures to seize the many opportunities that deep analytics and insights bring.”