PASADENA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Metacloud, Inc. today announced a new release of Carbon|OS, the industry’s premier OpenStack-based operating system for the enterprise environment. Representing a full year of development work by Metacloud and the larger OpenStack community, Carbon|OS combines the simplicity of the public cloud with the performance, security, and cost advantages of private cloud -- all on clients’ existing hardware infrastructure. It is available immediately and has already been deployed by Fortune 5000 companies in industries including entertainment, finance, and technology.
“Metacloud has brought an entirely new delivery model to market for enterprise software -- one where product and support are tightly intertwined. In the traditional consumer SaaS model, features sit atop software, on hardware, in an off-premise data center. Our enterprise SaaS model is similar, but the hardware is on premise and owned by our customers, allowing them economies of scale,” said Steve Curry, President and founder of Metacloud. “This model is already rapidly gaining traction and it’s clear that the practice of shipping software to customers to install and operate on their own is on its way out.”
Carbon|OS is one of the first commercial deployments of OpenStack Grizzly. On its own, Grizzly is a vast improvement over previous releases, but Carbon|OS includes a number of breakthrough features that make it ideal for the most demanding enterprise environments and a superior alternative to other public and private cloud services, including:
· True self-service: The Carbon|OS invite-based tenant management system empowers end-users by giving them access to the compute resources they need when they need them without requiring them to request assistance from IT administrators. They simply leverage their existing Active Directory credentials to access compute power and collaborate with coworkers instantly. This will greatly enhance enterprise agility and help eliminate the key drivers of shadow IT by removing the obstacles users traditionally encounter when procuring IT resources in-house.
· Advanced instance scheduling and placement: Carbon|OS offers dozens of new algorithms that allow administrators to place virtual machines (VMs) wherever they want for maximum performance. Latency-sensitive applications can be housed on VMs that are right next to each other. Large Hadoop clusters can be broken up into smaller nodes that have decreased network and I/O latency. And web servers can be spread across different racks throughout the data center for maximum redundancy. Plus Carbon|OS allows administrators to treat heterogeneous hardware exactly the same, achieving full utilization even with boxes that have radically different memory and CPU specifications.
· Enhanced web interface: Carbon|OS makes OpenStack easier than ever to work in by adding greater functionality to the dashboard. Previously many OpenStack capabilities were accessible only via API and CLI tools, which was fine for the most experienced administrators but challenging for others. The improved interface provides a more intuitive environment that will appeal to a larger population of IT professionals.
· Horizontally scalable control plane: Typical disaster recovery systems require a complicated set of technologies to do the right thing under the worst conditions. But Carbon|OS is arranged differently. It runs cloud orchestration services across all nodes in the control plane all the time, so the system is continually being tested. This not only decreases interruptions during unplanned outages, it improves performance by utilizing all the resources allocated to the control plane.
· Commodity-based block storage: Carbon|OS delivers powerful, flexible block storage capability through Ceph--an open source solution that allows IT departments to pool storage across commodity compute nodes. This mitigates the need for expensive shared storage hardware and frees organizations to purchase commodity equipment from whichever manufacturer is offering the best price at any given time.
“We often hear conjecture regarding OpenStack's production readiness. The dialogue is a bit off the mark. The real issue pertains to software complexity and aligning operational expertise to meet such complexity. There is a massive need for low-level OpenStack engineering talent; the demand far outweighs the supply. We deliver the supply by delivering Carbon|OS as a service.”
--Sean Lynch, CEO and Founder, Metacloud
“We're running into a tremendous number of clients that want to exploit the value in their current hardware investment, and the last thing they want to hear is ‘Buy new hardware or appliances.’ We designed Carbon|OS from the ground up to handle almost any hardware type out there, and to immediately maximize the value and efficiency of that hardware. The enterprise wants efficiency at scale, a product that's easy to use, and proactive support that's tightly coupled with the solution, and this is what we deliver. Metacloud takes on the responsibility of delivering a production-ready platform, at scale, backed by a solid SLA.”
--Steve Curry, President and Founder, Metacloud
Metacloud Carbon|OS includes 24x7 proactive support from Metacloud’s in-house cloud team to ensure maximum performance at all times. They monitor, troubleshoot, upgrade, handle capacity planning, and perform bug fixes, enabling extraordinary service levels and helping Metacloud customers to extract maximum value from their private cloud investments.
Pricing and Availability
Carbon|OS is generally available and will be updated at no cost for current subscribers. For more information about pricing, contact sales@metacloud.com.
Additional Resources
· The Business Case for Private Cloud in the Enterprise white paper
About Metacloud
Metacloud deploys and supports on-premise, OpenStack-based private clouds for some of the world's largest internet businesses and enterprises. Delivered as a service, Carbon|OS combines the simplicity of the public cloud with the performance, security and cost advantages of private cloud -- all on clients’ existing hardware infrastructure. Founded in 2011 in Pasadena, Calif., by senior architects from Yahoo! and Ticketmaster, Metacloud is an OpenStack Foundation member and an active advocate and contributor to the project and its community. For more information, visit www.metacloud.com.
