Mirantis

Mirantis Inc
Industry Cloud computing
Founded 1999
Founder Alex Freedland, Boris Renski
Headquarters Sunnyvale, California
Area served
 Global
Key people
 Alex Freedland (CEO)
Products Mirantis OpenStack, Fuel
Website www.mirantis.com

Mirantis Inc. is a Sunnyvale, California, based B2B cloud computing services company. It focuses on the development and support of OpenStack, providing technology and support for clients to build and run open source cloud infrastructures. The company was founded in 1999 by Alex Freedland and Boris Renski.[1] It was one of the founding members of the OpenStack Foundation, a non-profit corporate entity established in September 2012 to promote OpenStack software and its community.[2][3][4]

Mirantis and OpenStack

OpenStack is an open source software platform for cloud computing infrastructures, under ongoing development by an open consortium of developers and vendors. It is co-ordinated by the OpenStack Foundation, formed to promote the "development, distribution and adoption of the OpenStack cloud software."[5] Mirantis has been a top contributor to the OpenStack project.[6] Mirantis works with clients to build out open private, public, and service-provider cloud solutions based on OpenStack, using open source tools to integrate the computing, network and storage capabilities which define an OpenStack infrastructure.[7][8] The Wall Street Journal characterizes OpenStack as providing "a kind of dashboard to help manage large numbers of servers, storage and networking devices like they were a single resource. Mirantis sells a commercial version and helps customers develop and install the software."[9]

In two rounds of fund-raising in January and June 2013, Mirantis raised $10 million in growth capital funding from Dell Ventures, Intel Capital and WestSummit Capital,[10] and a further $10 million from Red Hat, Ericsson and SAP Ventures.[11] In October 2014, Mirantis raised $100 million in a Series B financing round led by Insight Venture Partners, and joined by existing investors Intel Capital, WestSummit Capital, Telefonaktiebolaget L.M. Ericsson and Sapphire Ventures with the stated goal of scaling up engineering to increase OpenStack contributions and prepare for a 2016 IPO.[12] In August 2015, Intel led an additional $100 million funding round with new investor Goldman Sachs and existing investors August Capital, Insight Venture Partners, Ericsson, Sapphire Ventures (formerly SAP Ventures) and WestSummit Capital.[13]

Mirantis OpenStack

Mirantis launched its own OpenStack distribution in October 2013, in competition with OpenStack distributions from Red Hat, Hewlett-Packard and others. The Mirantis OpenStack distribution works with various operating systems, including Red Hat, CentOS, and Ubuntu Linux.[14][15]

Other delivery form-factors for Mirantis OpenStack include the Mirantis NFV Reference Platform, a reference architecture for Mirantis OpenStack designed to efficiently host, orchestrate and scale virtualized network functions in ways compatible with the ETSI-NFV specification.[16]

Mirantis Unlocked Appliances are turn-key, scalable modular racks, with Mirantis OpenStack pre-installed and pre-tested on select hardware in reference configurations optimized for different workload types, sold and supported in collaboration with Mirantis Certified Rack Partners. The first Unlocked Appliance, for Cloud Native Apps, incorporates hardware and software from Dell, Juniper and Intel.[17]

OpenStack community involvement

Mirantis founders, Alex Freedland (CEO) and Boris Renski (CMO) serve on the OpenStack Foundation Board[18] and were most recently re-elected in January 2016.[19] Mirantis contributes to many core OpenStack projects and leads projects in OpenStack core and Big Tent, including:

As of April 18. 2016, Mirantis was the largest code-committer to OpenStack Newton, with 24% of all commits recorded.[25]

Partnerships

Mirantis works with partners under its Unlocked program to validate infrastructure and solutions with releases of Mirantis OpenStack. In September, 2015, Mirantis launched a Network Function Virtualization (NFV) initiative with partners Citrix, Metaswitch Networks and Overture Networks, under its Unlocked program.[26]

In 2013, Red Hat announced that it would partner with Mirantis in offering the Mirantis Fuel solution to optimize deployment of Red Hat OpenStack.[27]

In November 2013, Mirantis partnered with VMware to help VMware clients build OpenStack private clouds on VMware vSphere virtualized servers. The partnership was described as "unlikely," because of the perceived competition between OpenStack and VMware's vCloud suite.[28]

In April 2014, Mirantis entered into an initial five-year partnership with the Swedish communications technology and services vendor Ericsson to provide OpenStack software on the Ericsson cloud platform which hosts telecommunications networks, internal data centers, and cloud computing services for Ericsson's clients. This was described as the largest deal to date for OpenStack software.[29]

In May, there were reports that Red Hat would no longer provide support to Linux customers using non-Red Hat versions of OpenStack. According to the Wall Street Journal, "Even some of Red Hat's largest partners say its actions contradict the spirit of the open-source community. ...Last November, Red Hat ordered its employees to stop working with Mirantis, a startup that sells a subscription and support for a commercial version of OpenStack. Red Hat (had) partnered with Mirantis and invested in the company last June."[30]

One month later, in June 2014, Mirantis partnered with Canonical, the UK-based company which provides commercial support for Ubuntu and other operating systems, in a project to ensure that Ubuntu is supported on Mirantis OpenStack, rather than exclusively on Canonical's own OpenStack distro. This was seen by some as, in part, a response to Red Hat's refusal to support Linux customers using non-Red Hat versions of OpenStack. One Forbes analyst wrote: "It's a win/win. Both companies get to look like the good guys. There’s a business development angle to all of this and best (if you’re Canonical or Mirantis anyway), it’s another chance to make Red Hat look like the big bad wolf in the proverbial OpenStack forest."[31]

The following month, computer technology and enterprise software vendor Oracle announced a partnership with Mirantis which will provide support for deploying OpenStack clouds in alignment with Oracle Linux and Oracle VM distributions.[32] This followed Oracle's decision earlier in the year to allow customers to use OpenStack cloud software with Oracle Linux and Oracle VM.[33]

The Wall Street Journal has reported that competition for OpenStack business sales among vendors like Mirantis, Red Hat, Cloudscaling, and others, is focused on a "potentially large pie. Business sales related to OpenStack will exceed $1.7 billion by 2016."[34]

In October, 2015, Mirantis announced formation of a joint-venture company with China's largest public cloud provider, UCloud, to accelerate adoption of OpenStack.[35]

References

  1. ↑ Brendan Maynard, "Russian former outsourcing Mirantis Announces $10 Million Series A Round" Goal Europe, June 24, 2013
  2. ↑ Alex Williams, "OpenStack Cloud Builder Mirantis Raises $10M In Second A Round From Red Hat, Ericsson And SAP Ventures" TechCrunch, June 6, 2013
  3. ↑ "OpenStack Launches as Independent Foundation, Begins Work Protecting, Empowering and Promoting OpenStack". BusinessWire. 19 September 2012. Retrieved 7 January 2013.
  4. ↑ "OpenStack Foundation Mission". Retrieved 7 January 2013.
  5. ↑ "OpenStack Launches as Independent Foundation, Begins Work Protecting, Empowering and Promoting OpenStack" BusinessWire 19 September 2012
  6. ↑ "Activity by Companies" OpenStack.org retrieved October 21, 2014
  7. ↑ Alex Williams, "Mirantis Raises $10M For OpenStack Services Push For Cloud-Bound Businesses" TechCrunch, January 10, 2013
  8. ↑ Alex Williams, "OpenStack Cloud Builder Mirantis Raises $10M In Second A Round From Red Hat, Ericsson And SAP Ventures" TechCrunch, June 6, 2013
  9. ↑ Spencer E. Ante, "Ericsson-Mirantis Deal a Milestone for OpenStack Software" Wall Street Journal (Digits Blog), April 2, 104
  10. ↑ Darryl K. Taft, "Mirantis Gets $10M in Funding to Boost OpenStack Cloud Push" eWeek January 11, 2013
  11. ↑ Alex Williams, "OpenStack Cloud Builder Mirantis Raises $10M In Second A Round From Red Hat, Ericsson And SAP" TechCrunch June 6, 2013
  12. ↑ Jack Clark, "Mirantis Gets Funding, Aims for IPO With OpenStack Tools" Bloomberg October 20, 2014; Ben Kepes, "Way To Gain A Headline--Mirantis Scores Biggest Ever Open Source Series B Funding" Forbes October 20, 2014
  13. ↑ Barb Darrow, "Mirantis scores another $100 million from Goldman Sachs, Intel and others" Forbes August 24, 2015
  14. ↑ Sean Michael Kerner, "Mirantis Fuels New OpenStack Cloud Distribution" eWeek, 21 October 2013
  15. ↑ Kevin McLaughlin, "Mirantis Takes On Red Hat, Canonical And HP With Its Own OpenStack Distribution" CRN, 21 October 2013
  16. ↑ Bill Boyle, "Mirantis Takes Partners to Promote NFV" Data Center Dynamics, September 18, 2015
  17. ↑ Stephen J. Vaughan-Nichols, "Mirantis Introduces Cloud-on-a-Rack OpenStack Appliances" ZDNet July 8, 2015
  18. ↑ "OpenStack: Board of Directors"
  19. ↑ "OpenStack: 2016 Board Election"
  20. ↑ Jack Clark, "Mirantis: Hey guys, here's an idea - we're putting 'open' in OpenStack" The Register October 21, 2013
  21. ↑ OpenStack Public Fuel Repository, github.com
  22. ↑ Sean Michael Kerner, "Mirantis Led FUEL Project Gets Installed Under OpenStack Big Tent", ServerWatch,November 20, 2015
  23. ↑ Ian Murphy, "Mirantis keeps cool with Icehouse" BusinessCloud June 9, 2014
  24. ↑ Chris Talbot, "IBM and Mirantis Launch OpenStack Benchmarking Tool" Talkin' Cloud, December 6, 2013
  25. ↑ "Stackalytics" April 18, 2016
  26. ↑ Swapnil Bhartiya, "Mirantis Launches NFV Initiative with Citrix, Metaswitch and Overture Networks" CIO September 17, 2015
  27. ↑ Red Hat press release, retrieved August 18, 2014
  28. ↑ Charles Babcock, "VMware, Mirantis Put OpenStack On vSphere" Information Week November 4, 2013
  29. ↑ Spencer E. Ante, "Ericsson-Mirantis Deal a Milestone for OpenStack Software" Wall Street Journal (Digits Blog), April 2, 104
  30. ↑ Spencer E. Ante, "Red Hat Plays Hardball on OpenStack Software" Wall Street Journal May 13, 2014
  31. ↑ Ben Kepes, "Mirantis And Canonical Take A Swipe At Red Hat, Supporting Ubuntu On Top Of Mirantis OpenStack" Forbes June 4, 2014
  32. ↑ Sean Michael Kerner, ""Mirantis and Oracle Partner on OpenStack" eWeek July 7, 2014
  33. ↑ Oracle press release, May 13, 2014, retrieved August 1, 2014
  34. ↑ Al Sadowski, "OpenStack--451 Research's Annual Market Assessment" 451 Research August 1, 2014
  35. ↑ "Mirantis and UCloud in joint bid to tap massive potential of Chinese cloud market" Business Cloud News, October 27, 2015

External links

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