OpenStack-based private cloud vendor Blue Box today announces the finalization of $14M in Series B funding. Originally announced in October 2014, the finalization of the Series B capital raise was enabled by the participation of a national telecommunications company as a strategic investor. The telecommunications company qua strategic investor plans to partner with Blue Box to deliver Blue Box products and services to its customers. Other investors in the Series B funding round included a strategic investor mentioned in October’s announcement in addition to Voyager Capital, Founder Collective and the Blue Box executive team. Today’s announcement brings the total Series B funding raise to $14M in contrast to the $10M figure announced in the original Series B announcement in October. The funding will be used to accelerate the development of Blue Box’s hosted private cloud solution for the enterprise that leverages OpenStack technology. In May 2014, Blue Box announced the general availability of its private cloud as a service featuring “concierge” technical support for a fully managed OpenStack deployment on Blue Box hardware. Blue Box also offers support for the BOSH deployment of Cloud Foundry on OpenStack, thereby enabling customers to reap the benefits of Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service in one hassle free deployment. Seattle-based Blue Box has now raised a total of $18.3 in funding following upon the closure of $4.3M in Series A funding in December 2012.
Category: Blue Box
Blue Box Launches Managed Hosting Offering For OpenStack Private Clouds
Blue Box recently announced the release of its early adopter program for
OpenStack Hosted Private Cloud. As a result, customers interested in developing applications on OpenStack can now turn to Blue Box for help with the likes of deployment and configuration, load balancing, scalability and customer support. Blue Box’s managed, OpenStack private cloud offering will be based on code released directly by the OpenStack Foundation. As such, the solution leverages OpenStack Nova for compute, Neutron-based software defined networking, a Horizon web interface for configuration and resource allocation and Keystone for authentication and policy management. The early adopter program supports recent releases such as OpenStack Havana and Grizzly and plans to update OpenStack deployments to subsequent releases from the OpenStack Foundation as they become available. Key components of the Blue Box offering include management of OpenStack orchestration, “including monitoring and release management,” according to the company’s press release. Blue Box also delivers security functionality that accommodates HIPAA and PCI protocols.
In a recent blog post, Blue Box CEO Jesse Proudman noted that the five key attributes of a private cloud solution are ease of use, the ability to integrate with a customer’s existing IT infrastructure, security, cost transparency and cost control and elasticity. Proudman told Cloud Computing Today that Blue Box’s managed OpenStack private cloud solution delivers on all five aforementioned attributes, and additionally delivers deployments more nimbly, with greater consultative attention than its counterparts in the industry.
Blue Box customer Big Fish elaborated on its ability to nimbly deliver on its changing customer needs as follows:
Big Fish Games had a unique set of requirements with our first OpenStack deployment. We needed a vendor who demonstrated technical expertise in building and supporting cloud infrastructures on OpenStack, while keeping pace with our often changing technical requirements. We selected Blue Box because they consistently demonstrated their expertise in these areas and their ability to quickly adapt to our requirements.
Here, Paul Farrall, VP of Operations at Big Fish remarks on the agility of Blue Box’s collaborative approach to building an OpenStack-based infrastructure in tandem with its “often changing technical requirements.” The broader point, here, is that Blue Box is staking out a position that differentiates itself from competitors such as Rackspace by virtue of its ability to quickly respond to the needs of clients in an effort to become the managed hosting vendor of choice for agile development on the OpenStack platform. The market should expect managed private OpenStack cloud offerings to proliferate as OpenStack adoption accelerates and customers begin their OpenStack journey with the private cloud option. Pricing begins at $4,000/month for a “hosted, single-tenant” OpenStack private cloud with 96 cores, 175 GB of RAM and 3 TB of Ephemeral Storage including round the clock support.
Cloud Computing Today 