OpenStack has come long way since its release in July 2010. Originally developed by Rackspace and NASA, the project is now managed by an industry-backed foundation comprised of representatives from a wide range of companies. Red Hat and IBM, two of the most prominent OpenStack contributors, are pushing to make the platform more attractive for the traditional enterprise in an effort to counter Amazon’s rapid advance on their home turf.

Red Hat is leading the way with OpenStack Platform 4.0, a specialized version of its Enterprise Linux distribution that is specifically optimized for running open source cloud deployments. The software, now in general availability, was first introduced in November as a “stable, high-performing public, private, or hybrid OpenStack cloud, ready to handle critical workloads.”

OpenStack Platform 4.0 is based on the Havana release of the project, and comes with a host of new features. The offering provides full support for Neutron, the software-defined networking component of OpenStack, as well as the Heat orchestration engine and Ceilometer metering utility.

Customers can now use the open source Foreman tool to provision their physical and virtual infrastructure and leverage Red Hat’s CloudForms console to keep tabs on their environments. On the storage side, integration with the Red Hat Storage Server enables admins to manage their block and object capacity, as well as VM images, from a single pane of glass.

IBM is also working to simplify OpenStack, having recently released an automated Resource Scheduler for its SmartCloud Entry and Smart Cloud Orchestrator service offerings. Built with technology Big Blue gained through the acquisition of Platform Computing in 2012, the tool lets OpenStack users set policies for dynamical workload allocation to drive efficiencies in their deployments.