Piston OpenStack Takes on AWS with Low-Cost Private Clouds

OpenStack orchestration vendor Piston is shooting to make do-it-yourself private-cloud computing easier with the release this week of a new version of its Piston OpenStack platform, which it says offers all the benefits of the AWS public cloud without the costs or security vulnerabilities.

Piston's target audience—software developers—represents a relatively small niche, but the company has a novel approach to OpenStack deployment on the cheap. The idea behind Piston OpenStack is to allow enterprises to deploy scalable private clouds on hardware they already own, without the need for special provisioning, to support software development.

"Piston OpenStack provides the same ease of use and developer-centric features as AWS without the high price tag or security concerns,” said Jim Morrisroe, CEO of Piston. "If your AWS bill has gone off the rails or public cloud isn’t a fit for your business' regulated environment, then Piston OpenStack is for you. Unlike traditional on-premise solutions, Piston OpenStack is so easy to deploy and manage that you can build a complete app dev environment in a single day that needs almost no ongoing operations support."

The new release, Piston OpenStack up to version 3.5, delivers better security and lower total cost of ownership, the company says, by taking advantage of the new APIs available in the OpenStack Icehouse release, as well as supporting Intel's Trusted Execution Technology.

In an effort to sway new customers toward Piston adoption, the company also announced this week that it has developed a TCO Calculator designed to predict the total costs of deploying and maintaining a private OpenStack cloud based on Piston's solution.

Piston OpenStack 3.5, which the company offers on a subscription-license basis, is available now for download.