The Volkswagen Group has chosen OpenStack, as its global standard for next-generation private cloud, aiming to drive innovation across business and consumer applications. The automaker will use the open-source cloud computing platform OpenStack to build a private cloud that will host websites for its brands VW, Audi and Porsche, and be a platform for innovating automotive technology
Europe’s largest automaker selected Mirantis, an OpenStack company, as its OpenStack distribution vendor. Mirantis demonstrated a 98% execution rate across 64 use cases, and emerged as the most stable and fastest to implement among industry OpenStack distributions. Volkswagen Group will leverage Mirantis OpenStack to power applications in all Volkswagen Group brands.
In the final stages of the vendor vetting process, VW officials conducted an evaluation assessment across 64 use cases before choosing Mirantis, which bases its software entirely off of code from the open source project. Mirantis packages the open source components into a product bundle to ease installation and management and provides 24/7 help desk support, basic triage of bugs plus continuous updates and patches of the software.
The open source cloud platform is projected to cut IT costs through joint standardization. It will support internal and consumer-facing applications and will connect people across Volkswagen, its dealers and suppliers.
The joint project focuses on adding critical enterprise features to OpenStack to ensure that applications can be managed with high performance, enabling full control of data center infrastructure. The system will be fully optimized for Intel platform capabilities, making amazing experiences possible.
“As the automotive industry shifts to the service economy, Volkswagen is poised for agile software innovation,” said Mario Müller, Volkswagen VP IT Infrastructure in a prepared statement. “The team at Mirantis gives us a robust, hardened distribution, deep technical expertise, a commitment to the OpenStack community, and the ability to drive cloud transformation at Volkswagen. Mirantis OpenStack is the engine that lets Volkswagen’s developers build and deliver software faster,” he added.