VMware Veterans Launch Platform9 Private Cloud Management Company and SaaS Solution

New private cloud management company Platform9 made a big splash today, diving head first into the cloud platform arena with its SaaS offering. The solution is designed to take a customer’s existing servers and transform them into a private cloud, with the agility and features of public cloud infrastructure, within minutes.

The revolutionary new company and platform come from VMware veterans who have had the idea cooking or some time. They began working on the platform in October and it has been in stealth mode until now. Of course, Platform9 plays well with VMware vSphere as well as partners Docker and KVM, providing single pane of glass management of those solutions. The platform is currently in beta, fueled by $4.5 million in Series A funding from investors RedVentures.

Platform9 was created to fulfill a unique need faced by many IT executives today. IT departments are increasingly being tasked with using existing in-house infrastructure to deliver public cloud functionality and features. But with this burden comes the juggling act of managing a variety of virtualization and container technologies in order to efficiently allocate workloads.

“We founded Platform9 because as early engineers at VMware, we observed how customers were struggling to achieve AWS-like efficiency with increasingly archaic management software," said Sirish Raghuram, co-founder and CEO of Platform9. "We believe that just like SaaS revolutionized the world of enterprise applications, it can do the same for enterprise data centers."

Based on OpenStack, Platform9 offers API compatibility and a massive number of efficiencies since IT admins may import their existing servers and workloads to the platform within minutes. It offers easy management and upgrades and granular visibility and insights into the entire private cloud infrastructure, including workloads and users, across disparate locations and data centers.

Additional features include intelligent placement technology for optimal hardware utilization as well as the ability to use Docker, KVM and vSphere seamlessly to meet the needs of specific applications. A bonus is that developers have UI and API-based self-service access to their private cloud for quick and easy innovation and automation.