Mirantis, the pure-play OpenStack provider, today announced the launch of Mirantis OpenStack Express 2.0. The on-demand offering now enables enterprises to deploy the most current OpenStack edition, OpenStack Icehouse, in a robust, easy-to-use, enterprise-grade cloud service.

ARRIS, a global innovator in IP, video and broadband technology, credits Mirantis OpenStack Express with saving its team time and resources: "Hosted private clouds powered by OpenStack combine the ease of use typically seen in traditional IaaS offerings, with the flexibility and control you get with a private cloud," said Varma Chanderraju, principal engineer, ARRIS Group Incorporated. "Mirantis OpenStack Express, a hosted version of Mirantis' OpenStack distribution, saved my team significant time, and freed resources to focus on the application components, rather than OpenStack itself."

Mirantis OpenStack Express 2.0, an on-demand Private-Cloud-as-a-Service (PCaaS, offers the Mirantis OpenStack distribution for enterprises searching for ease, reliability, agility, and zero lock-in in the cloud). New features in Mirantis OpenStack Express 2.0 include:

• Enterprise-ready Icehouse: Mirantis rigorously tested Icehouse, making 350 significant improvements spanning the Horizon interface, Heat service orchestration and auto-scaling, Neutron networking, block storage, and nova-compute. The result is a sturdy, enterprise-ready cloud that enterprises can deploy with confidence and ease.
• One-click application deployment: Mirantis OpenStack Express 2.0 features an application catalog, Murano, that lets administrators deploy and run applications from one place. Murano's single point of control automates operations and makes application deployment faster.
• Flexible High Availability: Mirantis OpenStack Express 2.0 with High Availability (HA) guards a cloud against service interruption and data loss, regardless of hardware or software failures. Enterprises can start small, with a single controller, and grow an HA cloud without redeployment, giving flexibility as to when and how they scale their cloud.
• Pre-installed operating system images: To speed up time to value and remove setup steps, Mirantis OpenStack Express comes preinstalled with the latest Ubuntu Linux guest operating system images. Users can spin off virtual machines in a few clicks.
• An elegant dashboard: The re-designed user interface is more intuitive, clean, and organized.
• A simplified sign-up experience: Getting a cloud with Mirantis OpenStack Express takes minutes. To activate a trial account with a basic cloud set-up, simply enter an email address and password. Upgrade a trial account to a paid account with just a credit card.

"Mirantis OpenStack Express is the fastest way to get to production with a managed Mirantis OpenStack environment," said Adrian Ionel, Mirantis CEO. "Enterprises no longer face the hassle of integrating hardware and software or worry over how to make OpenStack work. With Mirantis, they can focus on what they do best: building and running applications."

Mirantis OpenStack Express 2.0 will remain as close to the OpenStack "trunk" as possible, free of proprietary additions and backed by 24/7 enterprise-grade support. To learn more about Mirantis OpenStack Express, attend a live demo, or sign up for a free trial, please visit https://express.mirantis.com/ or the OpenStack Foundation Marketplace.