Cloud Cruiser Shines Light On OpenStack Cloud Costs

OpenStack open source cloud initiative

With the launch of its Cloud Cost Management Solution for OpenStack, Cloud Cruiser gives MSPs and partners the ability to offer cloud cost management services to their clients, while also giving C-level enterprise executives insight into their cloud costs.

Cloud Cruiser's cost management offering for OpenStack features workflow tools that offer management and accounting capabilities for optimizing capital expenses versus operational expenses in heterogeneous cloud environments.

"At its core, cloud computing is all about costs," said Dave Zabrowski, Cloud Cruiser founder and CEO. And the ability to put cost management capabilities into an OpenStack environment will help MSPs show their customers what workloads make sense in what type of cloud environments and where they can get the best bang for the buck.

"It looks out across the enterprise to determine where the lowest cost place to move workloads is," Zabrowski said.

OpenStack, which hit its one-year anniversary last month, is a collaborative open source cloud project led by Rackspace. The open source cloud stack has amassed to more than 80 participating companies and more than 200 developers. Among its biggest partner companies and contributors are Cisco, Citrix and Dell, and HP recently pledged its allegiance to OpenStack.

Cloud Cruiser for OpenStack comprises four distinct cost management capabilities that let users see, charge, control and own every workload to the end-user level, Zabrowski said. First, it offers cost transparency by putting visibility to the cloud costs across various resources. Second, it offers cost accountability to show where cloud costs are going. Third, it delivers cost empowerment via granular level business intelligence. And lastly it offers cost control by letting users set alerts and budgets based on benchmarks, where they'll be alerted when cloud costs reach a certain level.

Zabrowski said that users can drill down into the details around cloud costs and view alerts and thresholds through the user interface.

For cloud providers, like MSPs, Cloud Cruiser for OpenStack can be added to their cloud services portfolio, Zabrowski said. And traditional resellers can offer it as an add-on to the OpenStack open source cloud stack.

"The use model is they're bundling services around cloud computing and offering this downstream," Zabrowski said.