Ericsson-Mirantis Deal a Milestone for OpenStack Software

April 2, 2014 Off By David

Grazed from WallStreetJournal. Author: Spencer E. Ante.

OpenStack, a kind of operating system for computer rooms, is emerging as an increasingly important piece of software. A move by Ericsson stands to provide another big push. The Swedish giant has signed a deal with a startup called Mirantis to use OpenStack as the software foundation for its telecommunications network, internal data centers and cloud computing services that Ericsson will offer its customers.

Ericsson declined to comment on the financial terms. But a person familiar with the matter said the software licensing deal extends for five years and has an estimated value of $30 million. Industry participants believe the deal with Mirantis is the largest to date for OpenStack, which has become a key weapon in the battle among cloud services that are taking over many company computing functions…

OpenStack, which is available for free on an open-source basis, provides a kind of dashboard to help manage large numbers of servers, storage and networking devices like they were a single resource. Mirantis sells a commercial version and helps customers develop and install the software…

Read more from the source @ http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/04/02/ericsson-mirantis-deal-a-milestone-for-openstack-software/

Read more from the source @ http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/85148