Mirantis' Updated Cloud Platform Aims to Make Kubernetes Easier

Open-source IT infrastructure vendor Mirantis has debuted the latest version of its Mirantis Cloud Platform, featuring its new ability to deploy Kubernetes on premises and a host of security, documentation and performance enhancements.

Announced recently at the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2018 conference in Seattle, the Mirantis Cloud Platform (MCP) is based on Kubernetes and OpenStack, and allows service providers and businesses to run customizable private clouds using open standards.

Improvements in the latest version of MCP include upgrades and updates to the included DriveTrain infrastructure-as-code component pipeline, which is the heart of MCP. DriveTrain helps users build and manage the continuous delivery pipelines that automate the management and maintenance of their private-cloud infrastructure.

Mirantis’ Boris Renski

MCP also gets improvements in platform security and user documentation, both designed to make it easier to use, manage and configure. The latest MCP release is built using OpenStack Queens, Kubernetes 1.11 and OpenContrail 4.0.

Boris Renski, the co-founder and chief marketing officer for Mirantis, told Channel Futures at KubeCon that the company, which began seven years ago providing professional services in the open-source marketplace, jumped into Kubernetes services two years ago when users began adopting it in droves.

“We saw a lot of people were deploying applications on their private clouds — applications that were built on Kubernetes,” said Renski. “We heard this from customers who were doing multitenant, on-premises deployments for their own businesses.”

When Mirantis saw this pattern, the company decided that to remain relevant in a crowded marketplace it should help customers solve their Kubernetes problems with a wide range of services and applications, he said.

“To run Kubernetes on premises, you need to take care of many other things, which requires something like OpenStack” to bring together components for compute, network, storage, bare-metal management and more, said Renski.

To get its services out to customers, Mirantis has grown its business beyond its original systems-integrator background in the channel and continues to embrace open source as it works with partners to resell its products, he added.

“Most of the organizations that work in the channel are always looking for opportunities to increase their margins,” said Renski. “The way to grow your business is to differentiate.”

Mirantis works with several dozen partners and has a team that works with a variety of partners to serve customers.

The latest changes and improvements to MCP are based on feature requests from customers, said Renski.

“The new updates are focused on making it simple to run Kubernetes on premises,” he said, which is a continuing issue for many customers.

Mirantis’ customers include Adobe, Comcast, State Farm, Wells Fargo, Volkswagen, Reliance Jio and AT&T.