Some of the most exciting cloud computing news in recent memory has just come out by way of a December 17, 2012 announcement from Abiquo, a cloud computing company focused on enterprise-level deployments. The announcement paves the way for big things in the area of data centre virtualisation. According to Abiquo, they have been chosen by technology innovator Exponential-e to provide the platform that will enable self-service and management of the company’s Virtual Data Centre product. This in turn will make it possible for Exponential-e to offer on-demand cloud computing at the enterprise level. It is a major development for data centre virtualisation. The Abiquo platform was chosen primarily because it can be used with just about any infrastructure configuration. It also supports all hypervisors in a way that makes virtual data centres possible. Exponential-e's enterprise customers will be able to control their own clouds, handling everything from individual applications to infrastructure requirements. According to Dominic Anschutz, Head of Cloud Operations at Exponential-e, several cloud platforms were looked at before deciding on Abiquo. They recognise Abiquo as an industry leader and the company best qualified to provide a cloud platform enabling customers to self manage their clouds. The company also plans to integrate their billing system in order to allow it to make it convenient for customers to do everything they need to through a single interface. Abiquo CEO Jim Darragh says his company's platform is the perfect solution for Exponential-e's virtual data centres. The platform makes it easy to deploy new virtual data centres independent of current infrastructure. At the same time, Darragh says Abiquo is an easy-to-use platform that makes managing complex systems from multiple vendors as seamless and problem free as possible. Their hope is to be at the forefront of a big push for data centre virtualisation, a push that may be on the horizon for 2013. Virtual Data Centres the Wave of the Future The most important part of the story is something that was not even mentioned but is still at the backs of the minds of both company CEOs. I am talking about, of course, the future of cloud computing in the UK. Right now most of Europe lags behind the United States in terms of cloud deployment and new infrastructure, due in part to an inherent mistrust of the club. However, with the addition of virtual data centres and self-managed cloud environments, it might be easier for companies to encourage enterprise level clients to make the transition. By offering a client complete control over their own cloud environment, answers the questions of security issues and redundancy. Those things would be up to the individual customer to take care of as they see fit. Visualisation technology continues to march on, becoming more and more apparent that it is the wave of the future for data centres. If so, the European cloud could be caught up in the swell. In my opinion, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.