- Platform9 - platform9.net
Topic 1 - Let’s start at the start. The company came out of stealth yesterday and advertises itself as a SaaS offering for private clouds. What exactly is a cloud managed platform for private clouds? It is almost as if you are putting the “control plane” in the cloud and keeping the “data plane” on-site and in the datacenter
Topic 1a - Lots of companies have been started by VMware alumni, but almost all of them focus on VMware-centric problems. Why wasn’t that your top priority in terms of service capabilities?
Topic 2 - This solution doesn’t come with hardware, but rather it uses what the customer has on premise. How do you inventory that equipment to know you have a baseline that can make Platform9 work effectively?
Topic 2a - In the press release you mention the product is based on OpenStack. Can you elaborate on what that means? Have you forked OpenStack?
Topic 3 - Let’s talk about operating an OpenStack environment. For most people, that’s the most complex part, as OpenStack is notoriously bad at operations (not designed into the projects). What black magic does Platform9 bring to this area? How are upgrades performed?
Topic 4 - You mention hypervisors (KVM, Docker, vSphere), if this is OpenStack, what happens to the storage and network? Cinder vs. Swift? Neutron vs. Nova Networks, etc? How do they integrate if at all?
Topic 5 - In talking with your early customers, how do they think about this from an economics perspective? There is the potential to get Cloud Management up fast and pay as they use it, but the equipment is still CAPEX-centric.
Topic 6 - We left security until the end. How is that handled and what’s is expected between Platform9 and the customer?
