Platform9, which has been gaining momentum in moving VMware customers to its private cloud suite, launched a community edition of its Private Cloud Director.
Private Cloud Director Community Edition, which is now generally available, has the full Private Cloud Director capabilities free of charge for single region deployments.
The goal for Platform9 is straightforward: Give enterprises a no risk way to try Private Cloud Director and get familiar with the experience. Platform9, along with Nutanix and HPE, are among the vendors targeting VMware workloads. VMware was acquired by Broadcom and although the deal was a financial hit for the vendor, customers have been vocal about pricing changes.
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Platform9 Private Cloud Director has multiple capabilities that align directly with VMware. Private Cloud Director includes VM High Availability, Dynamic Resource Rebalancing, VM Live Migration, Distributed Virtual Switches and software defined networking and can be installed on existing x86 servers and existing storage.
Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller said:
"The race for VMware replacements is on, and Platform9 is making one of the most compelling pitches as a VMware alternative, with a standards based approach, paths from VMware to Platform9 services and already a proven record with large enterrprise customers."
The community edition of Private Cloud Director, which is built on open source K3s, or production ready Kubernetes distribution, is designed for test environments on a single Ubuntu system, home labs and proof-of-concept efforts.
Platform9 has been building out its plan to reach customers as an option to replace VMware. In March, Platform9 launched its partner program to support resellers, systems integrators and managed service providers looking to replace VMware installations.
According to Platform9, it'll offer partners enablement services, high margins and performance incentives and migration services training. The company also said it is working with vendors on co-selling and co-marketing arrangements with enterprise storage vendors.
The big picture
Platform9 is putting in the building blocks to target enterprises with VMware installations and the strategy revolves around the following:
- Emphasizing Kubernetes as a core pillar of the Platform9 platform and a modernization play. Kubernetes is a key consideration as companies are looking to move away from VMware, but also consider their long-term architecture.
- Targeting enterprises with multiple hypervisors.
- Providing VMware-like features with a more simple experience.
- Highlighting deployments at scale. Platform9 has multiple large customers including Juniper Networks, Redfin and household names in telecom and retail.
- Being seen as an option as enterprises need platforms that can easily move workloads seamlessly between private and public clouds.
- Play the long-game since enterprises need to shift to a more modern stack over multiple years.
