OpenStack Gets...Easier

Although the promise of OpenStack and private cloud is huge, and still largely in front of us, the one challenge we've heard from people wanting to try it is "It's a bear!" Its reputation, whether or not well-deserved, is one of being a real challenge for even skilled IT people to install and deploy. For those who feel that way, or for those who believe the hype and have so far chosen not even to try, Platform9 may be what you need.

Platform9, the open-source-as-a-service company making cloud infrastructure easier, announced at the OpenStack Summit that it will now be available in the OpenStack Marketplace's new category for Remotely Managed Private Cloud. The new category features vendors in the OpenStack Marketplace who offer remotely managed private cloud solutions powered by OpenStack.

Founded in 2013 by a team of early VMware engineers, Platform9 provides open-source-as-a-service for enterprises that need faster and easier ways to manage cloud infrastructure across multiple platforms. Unlike do-it-yourself or legacy solutions, Platform9 delivers best-of-breed cloud infrastructure like OpenStack and Kubernetes as SaaS-managed solutions to reduce cost and time to value, all while avoiding being locked in to a single vendor ecosystem.

Platform9's OpenStack-as-a-service offering enables customers to get up and running with an OpenStack cloud within minutes, and it saves time and resources by managing the infrastructure build and deployment process. Platform9 oversees the entire OpenStack lifecycle, with 24/7 health monitoring, alerting, troubleshooting and upgrades. And, that would seem to free up developers to focus on solving core business problems. Enterprise customers of all sizes now have greater access to the efficiency and reliability of OpenStack without the complex, time-consuming set up and deployment.

"With OpenStack traction evolving from early adopters to mainstream enterprise, there is an increasing need for a fast, easy and predictable model to run OpenStack", said Sirish Raghuram, chief executive officer at Platform9. "As evidenced by marquee recent customer wins by Platform9 based on our OpenStack-as-a-service offering, remotely managed OpenStack is the right approach by the foundation to further accelerate mainstream OpenStack adoption."

Whether on-premises, hosted in the service provider's data center or across public clouds, PCaaS means that the vendor is responsible for architecting, monitoring, patching and upgrading the OpenStack infrastructure. Enterprises do not have to hire a team to manage the infrastructure behind their firewalls. But, they still reap all the benefits from OpenStack's open APIs and competitive ecosystem, and they should experience significant cost savings versus traditional infrastructure. Users even could achieve substantial savings over public cloud as scale increases and workloads stabilize.

This latest announcement comes on the heels of significant momentum for Platform9, including the recent launch of hybrid cloud-as-a-service for the OpenStack community, general availability of Managed Kubernetes, and Fission, the open-source, serverless framework built on Kubernetes.

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