Private cloud infrastructure company SoftIron, in a move to try to displace VMware’s vSphere suite, just announced its VM Squared virtualization platform. Recently, I discussed this development with Jason Van der Schyff, Chief Operating Officer at SoftIron.
“Our raison d’être has been to deliver a new type of on-premises infrastructure, which we call True Private Cloud,” he told me. “Our position has been that to be able to do that, you need to take care of both the hardware and the software stack, and that’s what we have in our product HyperCloud, which we designed from the ground up. We manufactured those motherboards in-house and assembled the final product in our facilities.”
Why Custom Motherboards and Hardware?
I was curious why, with the wide range of motherboards and hardware off the shelf, the company didn’t just go with that approach.
“Our view has been that you want to have control of the entire piece of hardware,” Van der Schyff said. “In reality, today you can’t get that if you buy something off the shelf. You’re dealing with many vendors; they don’t always play nicely with each other, and you end up with this compatibility matrix nightmare.”
Van der Schyff pointed to hyperscalers like AWS that have been building custom hardware for specific purposes for some time.
SoftIron’s VM Squared Offering
So, what does the SoftIron VM Squared solution look like?
SoftIron designed VM Squared as an alternative to VMware’s legacy complexity:
- Installation: The company says VM Squared can install in a half hour or less.
- User interface: The company says it streamlined the UI with no config settings more than a couple of clicks away.
- Reducing complexity: SoftIron says VM Squared automates provisioning and deploying so a company can scale more efficiently without adding management overhead.
- Path to private cloud: The company’s private cloud offering, HyperCloud, sits alongside VM Squared, and there’s a simple private cloud upgrade path.
- Migration from VMware: The company offers a migration tool to shift a VMware vSphere estate.
Running Private Cloud Features from VM Squared
A number of HyperCloud features can run within VM Squared, gaining access to a virtualized environment, including:
- Multitenancy that can be ready to go out of the box, with the simple addition of new tenants, MSP-ready security compliance, and the ability to work at the edge.
- Centralized, integrated cloud billing with a chargeback dashboard and role-based access control.
- Cloud scalability with automated provisioning and deployment, lower overhead, a simpler deployment, and node-add process, the ability to scale out, and elastic resource allocation.
- Cloud resiliency that comes with high availability built-in, a distributed control plane and storage, and the ability to move VMs between hosts without downtime.
The company also touted simpler licensing and its marketplace, which it says includes “click-and-go images ready from Day 1” with installs of Linux, Windows, and partner appliances.
Bottom Line: SoftIron’s Ambitions are Considerable
SoftIron has taken a novel approach. Sometimes, a novel approach is good. Sometimes, it’s just a new way that might become accepted somewhere down the road. I’m not sure where SoftIron is. The company is taking on a lot. Custom hardware is something left to the big guys, so SoftIron must think it can punch way above its weight if it’s intent on playing that game.
But I applaud their audacity here and think the concepts are sound. Given Broadcom is changing everything about how customers buy and operate vSphere, IT pros are looking for alternatives, making the timing right for SoftIron.
For a deeper understanding of the cloud computing market, read our guide: Top Cloud Companies