CloudStack Software Engineering

Software engineering and software development services to develop features and integrations for Apache CloudStack

Tailored CloudStack Development and Integration Services

Our software engineering team is heavily focused on CloudStack and has numerous CloudStack project contributors and committers who work directly on the ongoing development of the technology. ShapeBlue is one of the top contributors to the CloudStack project.

Rapid development of new features for public cloud providers

We are able to develop features outside of the release cycle of CloudStack or commercial distributions of CloudStack.

New integration of vendor technologies into CloudStack

Many vendors seek to leverage CloudStack’s large install base as a route to market for their products. Working either for the vendor or a common end-user customer, we can help plan and develop these integration points.

Re-engineering and re-factoring of core code modules

Sometimes, the core code of Apache Cloudstack does not easily allow specific integration to be easily achieved. In these cases, we are often able to re-factor and improve core modules to allow the integration to be performed.

Back-porting of specific features or patches

Often our customers production environments are under strict change control so they do not wish to install newer versions of Cloudstack in an ad-hoc way. However, they may have urgent business needs to have a new feature available. In these cases, we can back port new features on request to older version of CloudStack.

Customer-specific pre-release testing

We see CloudStack deployed in a near-infinite number of network and storage environments. Our pre-release testing ensures that the new versions of CloudStack are fully tested in your specific environment.

Training and Consulting for development teams

For organisations wishing to write their own functionality or integration to CloudStack, we will work with your architects to create a suitable design and then train & mentor your in-house software development team.

Our CloudStack Software Engineering Process

ShapeBlue has a defined and proven process for CloudStack feature development. This process ensures that we deliver quality features within the agreed budget and timeframe, and it also maximises the chance that the feature will be accepted into the master branch of Apache CloudStack so it is available in future releases.

Initial Scope

We will scope the requirements initially at a high level to create a summary budget & implementation timeframe.

Design & Specification

We use a workshop process to capture detailed requirements and create a detailed design specification. We use this specification to create a detailed test plan, implementation and project plan.

Develop

Our developers will work to build the feature in accordance with the Specification.

Test & Acceptance

Code and unit tests will be performed during the development phase. However, we will run a formal set of Acceptance tests in order to prove that the functionality meets specification.

cloudstack engineering

Find Out More About Our Apache CloudStack Software Engineering

Need a new feature or integration? Get in touch with our software engineers, specialised in developing and contributing new features for Apache CloudStack do discuss your project, targets and how we can help.

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Helping the Project Grow

We work primarily within the Apache open-source community and are in the top 10 contributing organisations to this project. We encourage our customers to allow us to contribute all work back to the Apache CloudStack open-source project, which gives the advantage of the work being maintained by the community as a whole and accommodated into future releases. However, we acknowledge that customers may wish to keep some work proprietary for competitive or business reasons.

Our software engineering work is actually performed “within” the community. However, we have to ensure that any features are accepted into future releases. We do this through communicating our work to the community, answering any concerns that others may have and, occasionally, modifying functionality to ensure it works well downstream.

Ongoing Support

Once code has been accepted into CloudStack, we support that work through our CloudStack Infrastructure Support service. Customers must have our product patching service.

cloudstack infrastucture

Apache CloudStack enables existing VMware users and gives an easy way for service providers to migrate to a fully open-source solution and eliminate vendor dependency.