Mirantis and Ericsson in one of the largest OpenStack Software deals in history

Ericsson to virtualize network infrastructure with Mirantis carrier-grade OpenStack distribution

Mountain View, Calif., April 16, 2014 – Mirantis, the number one pure-play OpenStack vendor, and Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC), a world leader in communications technology and services, entered into an initial five-year partnership to deploy Mirantis carrier-grade OpenStack software in the Ericsson cloud software platform used for telecommunications networks, internal data centers and cloud computing services that Ericsson will offer its customers.

The deal, believed to be the largest OpenStack software engagement to date, represents a dramatic shift in the telecommunications industry as Ericsson pioneers a cloud approach to its global networking infrastructure. Ericsson today connects more than 2.5 billion subscribers globally and Ericsson networks carry more than 40 percent of the world’s mobile traffic. Ericsson’s cloud transformation covers telecom, IT and public cloud. The adoption of carrier-grade Mirantis OpenStack software for Ericsson’s cloud platform promises to reduce the number of hardware platforms in the network, reducing power consumption, slashing operating expenses by creating more flexibility to scale up, scale down, and dramatically reduce time to market to deliver new services.

“We’re looking forward to closely and actively working with Mirantis on the areas that our operators care most about: performance, resiliency, fault tolerance and security. We believe that the joint effort between our companies will help advance and enhance the production quality of OpenStack,” said Dr. Jason Hoffman, Product Line Head for the Ericsson Cloud Systems and Platforms.

Among the top five companies worldwide in contributing open source software to OpenStack, Mirantis has helped build and deploy some of the largest OpenStack clouds at companies such as Cisco WebEx, Comcast, Dell, The Gap, NASA, NTT Docomo, PayPal, Sprint and Verizon.

“Our partnership with Ericsson demonstrates the extraordinary innovation possible with OpenStack and is a major milestone in proving the readiness of OpenStack to meet the uptime, reliability and performance requirements of the most demanding use cases,” said Adrian Ionel, CEO of Mirantis. “At Mirantis, we’ve dedicated enormous engineering resources to bring OpenStack up to carrier grade standards and Ericsson is really taking a leadership role in innovating for its customers around open standards and cloud computing.”

Cloud-based services provide an opportunity for network operators to add value and improve the timeliness and quality with which they deliver enterprise services and applications – whether through more efficient telecom and internal IT services or value-added cloud services for consumers and enterprises. Cloud-based services will also allow operators to ensure rapid service creation and rollout by delivering new levels of flexibility, scalability and responsiveness. This will help satisfy growing user expectations for new innovative services with high QoE, while handling ever-increasing traffic loads. The result will be an improved experience for consumers, with greater efficiency, lower costs and higher margins for operators.

In addition to using Mirantis OpenStack for carrier-grade deployments, the Ericsson Global Services organization will deploy and integrate Mirantis OpenStack for the IT operation of mobile operators and service providers. This helps operators rationalize their IT infrastructure by delivering enterprise-grade cloud services to their users based on an open, widely supported standard. To support this initiative, Mirantis will also provide training, design and architecture assistance to Ericsson Global Services.