Cloud vendors Mirantis and Canonical have signed a support agreement aimed at helping data center operators to avoid vendor lock-in when buying IT platforms.

Systems integrator and service provider Canonical will support cloud vendor Mirantis’s OpenStack offering on Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux operating system, in addition to offering its own OpenStack offering.

The rationale, say the companies, is to broaden choice and openness for customers without vendor lock-in.

Under the terms of the deal, Mirantis will offer enterprise customers a commercial bundle that will include subscription to Mirantis OpenStack with support for Ubuntu host and guest instances.

Mirantis and Canonical will integrate support operations to provide a consistent service level agreement and support escalation path for customers.

With Ubuntu being the most popular cloud operating system in use, about 55%of development and testing work and 89%of production work is carried out using its modus operandi, according to the latest OpenStack user survey.

The two companies have announced they will invest in regular compatibility testing between Mirantis OpenStack and Ubuntu to ensure that the two systems can work together efficiently.

In addition, the companies will collaborate to create a combination that can be supported, secure and ready for production workloads.

Canonical VP of cloud alliances John Zannos said: “We are committed to interoperatbility and freedom from vendor lock-in.”

This collaboration will encourage enterprises to adopt OpenStack and the interoperability will protect their buying power in future by giving them more customer choice, he said.

Mirantis co-founder and CMO Boris Renski. The logic behind the partnership is that OpenStack adoption usually moves from proof of concept trials and pilots into production.

But in these first stages, support is crucial, otherwise endusers can be seduced by the temporary haven offered by proprietary systems, which subsequently lock them in.

“Ubuntu is the most popular Linux platform used in OpenStack and we expect this partnership to give Mirantis OpenStack customers additional confidence,” Renski said.