Another private cloud storage offering based on OpenStack hit the channel in recent days as SwiftStack announced the general availabililty of its Swift object storage system. The solution, an example of software defined storage, is poised to challenge alternatives running in the public cloud, which SwiftStack says it can match in scalability and beat in price.

The Swift object storage system is a software defined storage platform that runs on commodity hardware. That strategy allows the company to keep costs low while still delivering scalability, flexibility and extensive control over data stored in the cloud.

SwiftStack is also pitching the offering as highly user friendly, saying it provides “the fastest and easiest experience when deploying and managing private cloud storage.” That convenience also owes much to the commodity-hardware focus of the platform, according to the company: “With a software-defined architecture, the storage intelligence is decoupled from the hardware, allowing organizations to use industry-standard (commodity) hardware instead of being locked in to a specific hardware vendor.”

The general availablity of the Swift storage platform follows the announcement earlier this month of an effort led by SwiftStack, with help from Intel (INTC) and other channel partners, to make OpenStack storage more efficient by implementing erasure codes. The improvements could reduce OpenStack cloud storage costs by as much as 50 percent, according to SwiftStack.

SwiftStack private cloud storage is currently available on a subcription basis. Pricing begins at $249 per month for 25TB.