Mirantis opens office in France to deliver zero lock-in OpenStack solutions to European customers

Experienced local team brings real-world expertise in OpenStack development, deployment and operation

Grenoble, France — (June 25, 2014) — Mirantis, the number one pure-play OpenStack vendor, today announced the opening of a new office in Grenoble, France. This will add to an already strong presence in Europe, with existing Mirantis offices in the Netherlands, Poland, Ukraine and Russia.

The new subsidiary will serve as both an R&D center and a training, consulting and support facility for the growing number of Mirantis customers in Europe such as Orange, Ericsson, and Pulsant. Its charter also includes automating OpenStack operations, enhancing security and building a local community of partners and developers.

Leading the office is veteran technologist Patrick Petit, the newly appointed Director of Engineering and General Manager of Mirantis France. Patrick brings over 25 years of experience innovating leading-edge distributed platforms and cloud architectures to Mirantis.

“As European customers adopt OpenStack, the Mirantis zero lock-in approach offers the easiest and most reliable path to a successful outcome,”  said Adrian Ionel, Mirantis CEO. “We’re delighted to have people of Patrick’s caliber join Mirantis. We see Europe not only as a market but also a source of some of the best technical talent in the world.”

“Grenoble has a history of concentrated expertise in technology and compute infrastructure. Its reputation as the leading French center of engineering and knowledge-driven industries continues to attract great talent,” said Patrick Petit. “Because the success of cloud technologies depends on combining a broad span of technologies, from networking to virtualization to distributed applications, the integrative disciplines found in Grenoble and the Rhone valley provide an excellent foundation for building new capabilities into OpenStack IaaS and feeding the appetite for cloud both locally and worldwide.”

Patrick Petit will lead a team of researchers and developers focused on developing advanced applications of OpenStack cloud computing for European and global clouds. Patrick spent his last three years at Bull as a Principal Cloud Architect in the OpenStack Expertise Center of the Innovative Products Division. Prior to Bull Patrick held a series of leadership positions at Sun Microsystems where he worked in both the company’s California headquarters and in the R&D Engineering Center of Grenoble. He holds an MBA from the Grenoble Graduate School of Business (GGSB).

The XLCloud project, for which Patrick Petit served as Technical Lead, enables leading edge high-performance applications in an OpenStack IaaS cloud, including a very low latency 3D graphics customized video encoder capable of streaming MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 content. In practical terms, XL cloud makes it possible to deliver full-speed, fluid video games directly into a web browser.

Mirantis new Grenoble office is located at 55 rue Blaise Pascal. Contact the office at info-fr@mirantis.com.