OpenStack cloud vendor Mirantis is expanding its capabilities with the acquisition of privately held TCP Cloud. Financial terms of the deal are not being publicly disclosed.
TCP Cloud is a 30-person firm focused on enabling cloud operations with a continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) approach. MK.20 is TCP Cloud’s core offering, and the plan is to have that integrated into Mirantis’ platform to enable operators to run highly optimized cloud infrastructures.
“In the evolving world of infrastructure, it’s not about OpenStack or Kubernetes; it’s about enabling the continuous delivery of agile infrastructure,” Alex Freedland, CEO of Mirantis, told eWEEK.
The only organizations to date that have successfully enabled the continuous delivery of agile infrastructure are public clouds, according to Freedland. More specifically, Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides its users with APIs to access infrastructure components that are continuously delivered, he said. However, the problem with Amazon’s CI/CD approach is that everything is tied to Amazon’s own data centers and technology, which can lock in customers, Freedland added.
“There is evidence that customers don’t care about the software bits; they care about the outcomes,” Freedland said. “Customers want agility and user experience.”
Mirantis is acquiring TCP Cloud for the ability to deliver continuously updated agile infrastructure. With the advent of Docker containers, there is now an opportunity to create a generic CI/CD pipeline to enable a very agile cloud infrastructure, Freedland said. Mirantis doesn’t have a lot of experience in logistics and was not yet in the business of building generic CI/CD pipelines, he noted.
“We were in the process of looking at building generic CI/CD capabilities, but we realized with TCP Cloud that we could advance entry into market by nine months to a year,” Freedland said.
Being able to bring agile cloud infrastructure capabilities to market faster is key for Mirantis, due to a number of market dynamics.
“When you look at who else offers this on the private side, really the most credible player that is reasonably agnostic is Rackspace,” Freedland said.
Rackspace is currently in the process of going private, which Freedland said will likely impact that business in many ways. He expects the whole process of Rackspace going private and then divesting different aspects of its operations to take up to 18 months.
“We want to use the next 18 months to establish our leadership in this area,” Freedland said. “So getting a nine-month jump on releasing a product is critical for us, and that’s why we decided to acquire TCP Cloud now.”
Mirantis isn’t the only OpenStack cloud vendor that realizes the value of enabling agile cloud infrastructure delivery. Back in 2014, Red Hat acquired cloud services vendor eNovance in a $95 million deal that at the time was also positioned as helping to enable CI/CD methodology in customer OpenStack environments.
For the last several years, Mirantis has branded itself as a pure-play OpenStack company, but that is now changing too as the company focuses on operations.
“Today our website no longer says pure-play OpenStack; it says ‘build, operate and transfer,'” Freedland said. “We build and operate private clouds for our customers. That’s what we do.”
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eWEEK and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.
