Zenoss, provider of management software for physical, virtual and cloud-based IT environments, is revealing a new product today, centered around analytics for data warehouses, which are still a major part of the cloud.  Called Zenoss Datacenter Insight, the new service delivers analysis tools for dynamic cloud-based infrastructures, reporting on a plethora of items in real time.  It’s an advanced tool for Zenoss clients, which span a few businesses in the cloud, including cloud service providers like VMware.

Datacenter Insight is a turnkey solution aimed at simplifying the study of the cloud, offering a number of metrics that can trickle down to the consumer level, help companies assess the allocation of their cloud resources, and provide a more complete look at the availability and performance of their existing datacenter.

Zenoss’ Datacenter Insight tool does this by looking at the relationships and dependencies of datacenter facilities, enabling cloud providers to have a context-rich view of their infrastructure.  It moves beyond the idea of a stream of data points, aiding in the decision-making process for IT management.  It looks at networks, servers, storage, power controls, temperature sensors and more.  Providing analysis of all virtual resources, like hosts and applications, Zenoss is also integrated with platforms like VMware and Cisco, appealing to a range of service providers and clientelle.

The intelligence behind Zenoss’ new analytics tool is steeped in the company’s own knowledge base, which has grown from the experiences of engineering data warehouses and other real time products.  This is a major point of differentiation for Zenoss, which stands apart from other analysis products in the space, with the appeal of a “been there, done that” attitude.  The result is an end-to-end analytics toolkit that’s ready to work with technologies its clients are already familiar with.  “Because we understand all the metadata from vendors, storage, servers, networks and reports that allow you to slice and dice the data, you can really see patterns from a number of perspectives,” explains Bill Karpovich, Zenoss CEO and co-founder.  Zenoss is tapping in at the storage level, becoming a part of the cloud strategy at a key point.

Zenoss expects this prime placement to become a competitive advantage for its own efforts, but also for those that use its Datacenter Insight product.  “It’s become key to the cloud strategy,” Karpovich tells me.  “In order to optimize the infrastructure and the availability to the end user, you need to understand and analyze what’s going on.”  Indeed, the companies with the fastest trigger on their own data sets will be able to maintain a nimbleness that’s been difficult to scale.  Implementation is still left to the managers, but Zenoss is delivering the initial knowledge base to jump-start the process more effectively.