DENVER – Mirantis unveiled a web-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) application that provides a step-by-step path to deploy applications using open source platforms in on-premise cloud environments.

The Model Designer for Mirantis Cloud Platform (MCP) is basically a website that includes drop-down menu options to simplify the application deployment process. It’s curated with open source tools to help with that deployment process, but also to provide users with enough flexibility to meet their support needs.

It begins by having a user describe the level of support they need. Boris Renski, co-founder and chief marketing officer at Mirantis, noted during an interview at this week’s Open Infrastructure Show in Denver that those levels of support are tied to basic configurability levels. Those labels include “I am too young to die” for those seeking the most support, to “Ultraviolence” for those willing to take more operational control.

Those configurability levels then pre-select most of the cluster setting, but still allow a level of customization. Once completed, those cluster settings are fed into Mirantis’ DriveTrain infrastructure manager, which validates the configuration data and deploys the correct cloud.

Renski said that the platform targets the steep learning curve in using YAML files to construct container clusters. It also provides the necessary guardrails to ensure a user stays within a company’s policies.

It also is geared toward on-premises environments that are increasingly coming back into vogue. Renski described Model Designer as taking the opposite approach of Google’s recently launched Anthos platform that looks to drive cloud native methods down into the on-premises environment. “It’s really about taking the focus for on premises first and then layering in cloud native on top,” he said.

The Model Designer platform is currently in beta, but Renski said that Mirantis expects to launch it publicly later this month.

Mirantis is also a big part of AT&T’s 5G and the broader Airship initiative. The vendor earlier this year announced it had signed an eight-figure, multi-year deal to provide AT&T with core infrastructure software to run the carrier’s 5G services. The central component of that core infrastructure is Kubernetes and is part of AT&T’s Airship work.

Mirantis CEO and co-founder Adrian Ionel explained that the company’s platform allows Kubernetes to be run on-premises, on bare metal, or in the cloud. And in the case of its latest work with AT&T, that Kubernetes base supports OpenStack as a workload on top of the container orchestrator.

Ionel explained that its work showed that Mirantis was able to bind the Kubernetes substrate to bare metal and that it could get that substrate to work at scale. He said that Mirantis expects the platform to run a few thousand nodes this year, and then scale to 10,000 nodes over the next three years, and more than 20,000 nodes “in the years to come.”

“This is really about Kubernetes taking a prime role in the future infrastructure of a gigantic carrier,” Ionel said. “The scale of this is really staggering.”