Israel-based business continuity software Zerto claims it has solved the cloud industry’s lack of portability. Launching its latest Cloud Fabric technology, it said that now companies can move data and systems between disparate platforms at will.

This new liquidity of assets, claimed Zerto, will enable data center services managers to operate a completely free market for IT.

The cloud fabric, which allows managers to shift workloads instantly and effortlessly, was developed by Zerto almost by accident, according to Gil Levonai, Zerto’s marketing VP. 

“When you create disaster recovery systems, you perfect the technique of moving entire environments from one place to another, instantly. But if you can do failover, then you can do migration.”

Although Zerto originally specialized in VMWare, it has a range of other options, such as HyperV, Openstack and Amazon, in its portfolio.

The objective, said Levonai, is to allow data center operators to move work loads onto any possible provider, hypervisor or location, according to the price performance ratio they need.

“It’s been described as a magic carpet that takes you wherever you want to go,” said Levonai.  “The technical explanation is that it automatically converts any work load into the right format for the right platform and makes the transfer happen.”

Zerto developed the underlying principles for its Cloud Fabric when running recovery, mobility and data protection systems for more than 450 enterprises, including Fortune 1000 companies.

The key disciplines that allow any production work loads to use any cloud are undisruptive workload mobility, cross-hypervisor and cloud application programming interface portability, application encapsulation and data protection, said Levonai.

“The notion of a Cloud Fabric is a concept that will evolve over time, but certainly includes the ability to protect and mobilize production work loads between VMware, Microsoft, Amazon, OpenStack and, in a later stage, between any cloud or hypervisor,” said Levonai.

Many disaster recovery companies could expand their roles into application migration, said John Morency, research VP at analyst Gartner. “The hybrid cloud is not possible without the ability to mobilize production applications so they can seamlessly take advantage of resources across clouds, hypervisors and infrastructures,” said John Morency, research VP at Gartner.

The concept of a cloud fabric is a mechanism for achieving the flexibility of virtualization across hybrids, he said.