Eucalyptus Systems is expanding the features of its open source software for building Amazon (AMZN) Web Services-compatible private and hybrid clouds. Eucalyptus 3.4 was designed to enable devops to reduce cloud costs while also increasing agility and strengthening control over performance, scale and security.

The new and enhanced features in Eucalyptus 3.4 were introduced because of increased pressure on businesses to innovate rapidly, the company noted in the 3.4 release announcement, adding that cloud spending has outpacing the associated value while business agility is being made difficult by internal processes and tools.

“With Eucalyptus 3.4, customers have the power to reduce cloud costs while gaining greater control over cloud performance, scale and security,” said Andy Knosp, vice president of product at Eucalyptus, in a prepared statement. “A single Eucalyptus private cloud can pay for itself in as little as three months. For organizations that need to dynamically scale their workloads to the public cloud, our compatibility with AWS allows companies to leverage this approach when it makes the most business sense.”

Some of the key features in Eucalyptus 3.4 include:

Many businesses are turning to private clouds for some of their workloads, and the easier it is for developers and cloud builders to make them easy and secure, the faster the uptake of private clouds will be.