Canonical has launched an OpenStack Autopilot system which it claims will make it so much easier to create and run clouds using open systems that it will ‘dramatically’ cut the cost of ownership. In a statement it promised that the need for staff and consultants will fall as a result of the pre-engineered simplicity built into it OpenStack based system.

The OpenStack Autopilot is a new feature in Canonical’s Landscape management system, a platform based on Linux. The Autopilot can add hardware to an existing cloud, making it easy to grow a private cloud as storage and compute needs change.

According to Canonical, currently the biggest challenge for OpenStack operators is finding a way to adapt their cloud to requirements dynamically, when the computing demands of customers are invariably both volatile and unpredictable. The cost of manually doing this, which involves re-designing entire swathes of infrastructure, is proving prohibitive to many clients, it said. The Autopilot provides a best-practice cloud architecture and automates that entire process, it claims.

Canonical is the company behind Ubuntu, the most widely used cloud platform and the most popular OpenStack distribution. According the latest Linux Foundation survey 65% of large scale production OpenStack clouds are built on Ubuntu. The OpenStack Autopilot allows an operator to choose from a range of software-defined storage and networking options.

The Autopilot presents users with a range of software-defined storage and networking options, studies the available hardware allocated to the cloud, creates an optimised reference architecture for that cluster and installs the cloud from scratch, according to Canonical.

The OpenStack Autopilot is so simple to use that any enterprise can create its own private cloud without hiring specialists, according to Mark Baker, Canonical’s cloud product management leader.

“Over time the Autopilot will manage the cloud, handling upgrades and dealing with operational issues as they occur,” said Baker.