While other companies offer a similar type of product, ZeroStack sees a competitive advantage in what it claims is the broadest range of customer choice in the way it can be deployed.

Mountain View CA-based ZeroStack brought its ZeroStack Cloud Platform for the simple installation and operation of a scale-out private cloud to market last year. Since then, they have been busily expanding its deployment options. The latest is the ability to deploy on pre-existing server hardware, and convert it into a self-service cloud.

“We are finding with private cloud that every customer has a unique profile, so we are giving people maximum choice,” said Steve Garrison, ZeroStack’s VP of Marketing. “We are still in the early days of understanding the private-public mix.”

Garrison said that there appear to be three types of customers, with each preferring a different deployment option. The first, which is heavily SMB, like a white box, where they don’t need to do much. ZeroStack has offered their software on SuperMicro hardware for this audience. Some customers are wedded to a specific OEMs hardware. For this group, ZeroStack has introduced validated options for Dell, HPE and Cisco UCS.

Deployment on existing servers is aimed at different audiences.

“Agility is a main call for action for enterprises, and the application developer community drives a lot of activity,” Garrison said. “That’s one audience we are trying to capture with this announcement.”

Garrison indicated that there is another audience for this method of deployment.

“About 50 per cent of our customers coming into the door are looking to reuse existing assets, and aren’t looking to make a new hardware commitment,” he stated. “It’s part of a trend of people moving from virtualized to cloud IT. This lets them make a kind of baby step without commitment by being able to port software onto an existing server.”

Yashpal Matharu, President of C9 Cloud Services, a ZeroStack partner that describes itself as a cloud value-added service provider, providing cloud consulting services across the whole lifecycle, agreed that the server deployment option is well suited to customers who are not looking to add to their hardware investments.

“This new server-based release targets customers that are in the middle of their refresh cycle, where the customer wants to re-use their investment, not replace it,” he said.

“This option makes it easier for people to make a decision and go quicker to market, both with SMBs and with enterprise licensing,” Matharu added.

“This gives us the broadest range of deployment options,” Garrison said. “The different use cases are a combination of size, who is driving the opportunity, and whether there is a preferred provider of platform. We can deliver to all of those.”