From the Fifth International Cloud Expo at the Javitz Convention Center in New York City -  Abiquo, a leading developer of Cloud infrastructure management software, on Monday announced The Thunderflash Exchange, a free community Web site designed to offer IT professionals a one-stop shop for searching, finding and downloading virtual machine images from any provider.

The Thunderflash Exchange is sponsored by Abiquo and is the first Cloud software directory which will allow both vendors and the open source community to add virtual machine images for use on any hypervisor.

At the time of launch, Thunderflash already lists more than 1,000 open source and commercial images containing software from a wide variety of vendors.

The virtual machine images available through Thunderflash are vitally important to IT professionals, as they contain pre-installed operating systems, applications and other tools, which can then be deployed as a unit in one simple operation. Such images can save IT professionals hours of valuable time building and configuring application servers from the ground-up. Thunderflash's advanced searching tools allow for the selection of exactly the right virtual machine image, which can then be directly download, enabling new application servers to be deployed in a fraction of the usual time.

Unlike the directories offered by hypervisor vendors and others, The Thunderflash Exchange is completely hypervisor agnostic, listing virtual machine images for all popular hypervisors. Additionally, the majority of images are available for immediate high-speed download directly from the Thunderflash site, rather than simply offering links to vendor sites, which are frequently broken, out of date, or have complex registration procedures.

"We are launching The Thunderflash Exchange to fill a critical market need," said Pete Malcolm, CEO of Abiquo. "IT professionals simply don't have the time to search multiple sites, each with its own procedures, or to deal with the frustration of broken links and complex registration processes. With Thunderflash, they can find the right image and be downloading it at high speed in seconds saving time and cost for the organization."

Open Source Community
Malcolm added, "As an open source company, we also wanted to provide this service as a way to give back to the developer community, and we will be encouraging them to add images much like they would any other open source project. Abiquo does not intent to profit from any downloaded content, and the entire Cloud market will benefit from an Exchange that's vendor-neutral and designed to speed the deployment of the Cloud."

Availability
The Thunderflash Exchange is live now at www.thunderflash.com. Anyone can search and browse virtual images for free. Direct high-speed download requires a simple one-time registration process and is completely free of charge. Vendors who would like to list their images on Thunderflash should contact vendors@thunderflash.com.

About Abiquo
Abiquo is a leading developer of Cloud management solutions founded in 2006. Abiquo envisions a future where private and public Clouds are fully interoperable and vendor neutral. The company embraces an opensource model where both community users and commercial organizations can fully benefit from the Cloud revolution. For more information, visit www.abiquo.com.