Mirantis and the Art of the Multi-Million Dollar OpenStack Business
As the OpenStack market place continues to grow, and vendors lunge to get a piece of the hot new open cloud customer base, Mirantis has shown many why it is for good reason. Just recently we saw the landmark announcement of a 100 million dollar series-B funding round for the enterprise OpenStack firm, and all eyes are on them as we begin to close out 2014.
As EMC prepares to make significant OpenStack related announcements on October 28th, hot on the heels of their acquisition of Cloudscaling, we see that this is no flash in the pan.
Enterprise OpenStack: No More Fresh Tracks
The panacea for skiers is to find untouched fresh powder and be the first to lead the way down a new piece of the mountain. In the enterprise OpenStack landscape though, there are very few fresh tracks left.
It isn’t that there isn’t much more of the proverbial mountain to explore, but there are lots of players who are putting themselves at the front and trying to snap up customers as OpenStack moves from early adopters to more stable incumbency in many data centers.
Red Hat is the most notable OpenStack-focussed company that will be an obvious competitor for Mirantis, and with VMware moving from being a dabbler in OpenStack to making a strong play to be an OpenStack management vendor, we are clearly at the start of an interesting and long battle for market share.
We will be watching closely as EMC opens the doors on their next set of announcements which will undoubtedly be something that will signal their intention to become a major player in OpenStack.
Consulting-as-a-Service
Mirantis has been working diligently to build on their model of strong partnerships with customers and consulting services which have the potential to be a boon for OpenStack vendors. Given Rackspace and their mantra of fanatical service, there is something to be said about the value of consulting for OpenStack architecture and deployment.
This is beyond the beginning of the OpenStack revolution, but it is still forming and there are lots of growing pains to be dealt with in the industry. The shift towards wider adoption will drive fast and furious innovation, more out of necessity than anything, as the drive to become the enterprise OpenStack leader opens up to more competition.
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