Platform9, a start-up based in Sunnyvale, California, announced general availability of its a SaaS solution that transforms an organization’s existing servers into an AWS-like agile, self-service private cloud. A version of Platform9 Managed OpenStack for VMware vSphere environments is now available. A version for KVM environments has been in production since January 2015. Support for Docker is in development; a beta will be announced later this year.
The company said its Platform9 Managed OpenStack’s unique SaaS delivery model not only makes it easy for IT to quickly deploy an OpenStack private cloud but also provides ongoing operational support by including monitoring, troubleshooting and updates for OpenStack.
With today’s announcement, Platform9 now fully supports VMware vSphere environments: a new VMware specific Virtual Appliance is now available to integrate the OpenStack controller services with vSphere resources. The Virtual Appliance works using vSphere APIs and is 100% interoperable with VMware vSphere, so operations can be performed either via the OpenStack control plane or via vSphere directly. The result is that for the first time, VMware customers have an easy to manage, fully interoperable solution to orchestrate their resources as an OpenStack-based private cloud.
“Platform9’s mission is to make private clouds easy to deploy and manage for the enterprise. By fully supporting VMware vSphere, we are enabling every VMware customer to instantly derive greater value and infrastructure agility from existing virtualized infrastructure,” said Sirish Raghuram, co-founder and CEO of Platform9. “Customers no longer need to choose between the world’s leading private cloud platform (OpenStack) and the world’s leading virtualization platform (VMware vSphere): Platform9 Managed OpenStack is 100% interoperable with VMware vSphere, allowing customers to integrate OpenStack and vSphere seamlessly. Developers can have self-service provisioning using OpenStack while at the same time, IT Operations manages the underlying infrastructure using vSphere.”
Platform9 also announced $10 million in Series B funding, bringing the funding total to $14.5 million. Menlo Ventures led the round, and previous investor Redpoint Ventures also participated. The company plans to use the money to accelerate its product roadmap for its growing customer base.
- Platform9 was founded by early VMware engineers Sirish Raghuram (CEO), Madhura Maskasky (VP Product), Roopak Parikh (VP Engineering) and Bich Le (Chief Architect)/
