SUSE Delivers New OpenStack Platform, Plus Training Offerings
SUSE has announced the availability of SUSE OpenStack Cloud 6, which it is positioning as an enterprise-ready distribution for building Infrastructure-as-a-Service private clouds with less stress on IT staff and resources. Like many other new distributions, this one embraces container technology.
Based on the OpenStack release Liberty, SUSE OpenStack Cloud 6 delivers availability enhancements along with Docker and IBM z Systems mainframe support that the company claims can make it easier to move business-critical applications and data to the cloud.
In addition, SUSE is offering new OpenStack training and certification for deployment and operation of OpenStack private clouds. These training offerings join a slew of other ones that we have been covering.
"The market has started to realize that do-it-yourself approaches to deploying private clouds are too time consuming, too expensive and too prone to failure," said Nils Brauckmann, CEO of SUSE. "As the first to offer an enterprise OpenStack cloud distribution, SUSE continues to focus on providing the OpenStack solution of choice for businesses. We combine rapid and simple deployment, configuration, management and maintenance with enhanced high availability features and the widest hypervisor support in the industry to give our customers access to the benefits of OpenStack without the complexities that hold some companies back."
A recent study commissioned by SUSE found that more than 90 percent of large companies say they have already implemented at least one private cloud within their business, would use a cloud solution for business-critical workloads, and believe there are business advantages to implementing an open source private cloud. At the same time, most respondents were concerned about installation challenges, possible vendor lock-in and a lack of OpenStack skills in the market. SUSE is addressing these concerns by adding non-disruptive upgrade capabilities along with a more business-friendly release cycle and longer support duration. These combine to reduce the load on limited skilled resources by requiring fewer upgrades and minimizing disruption to production environments. In addition, new OpenStack training and certification from SUSE will help grow the OpenStack skills base and support the growth of OpenStack solutions in the market. SUSE is introducing the SUSE Certified Administrator-OpenStack (SCA-OpenStack) certification along with a new training course on deploying and administering SUSE OpenStack Cloud to complement SUSE's existing SUSE OpenStack Cloud training.
SUSE developed its training curriculum in conjunction with the OpenStack Foundation.
"SUSE OpenStack Cloud is a sophisticated cloud solution that simplifies the automation and management of cloud services," said Lars Göbel, head of IT Operations for DARZ, a full IT service provider with its own high-security colocation data center situated in the former vault building of the bank of Hesse. "It delivers highly available, superb performance and outstanding value. SUSE OpenStack Cloud technology is extremely reliable. This enables DARZ to deliver high-quality IaaS services to our customers, with all the flexibility, performance and security they need."
For additional information on SUSE OpenStack Cloud, visit www.suse.com/cloud. For details on SUSE OpenStack Cloud 6 pricing, see www.suse.com/products/suse-cloud/how-to-buy.