OpenStack software provider Mirantis announced plans today for an acquisition that will feed bigger plans to move into the container era.

Czech startup TCP Cloud will be part of Mirantis' larger plan to containerize its OpenStack distribution. A partnership announced in July enlisted Google and Intel to integrate Kubernetes container orchestration into its Mirantis OpenStack and help push Kubernetes as a de facto standard.

TCP Cloud is a 30-employee company that develops managed services for OpenStack. Its work has included containers and Kubernetes, as well as Juniper’s OpenContrail for networking.

The startup's cloud software, called MK.20, will be integrated into Mirantis' implementation of Fuel, which is OpenStack's deployment and management tool.

According to Mirantis, the benefit to enterprises will be the ability to manage infrastructure more simply, as if it were software code. The goal is to make an enterprise's OpenStack cloud work as easily as a self-service public cloud like Amazon Web Services (AWS).

A side effect of this container obsession has been Mirantis' pledge to start adopting some container-like behavior. Specifically, Mirantis plans to end its cycle of doing software releases every six months. Mirantis OpenStack 10, coming late in the first quarter of 2017, is intended to be the company's last big software update. After that, Mirantis will adopt the principles of continuous integration and continuous development (CI/CD), applying small patches to its software as necessary.

Being privately held, Mirantis doesn't have to disclose terms of the deal (and didn't).