Open source vendor SUSE jumped into the distributed storage market this week with the launch of SUSE Enterprise Storage. Based on Ceph, the new offering positions the company to compete more strongly in the software-defined, scale-out storage market.

Specifically, SUSE Enterprise Storage is based on Ceph Firefly, which was released last May. Ceph is a leading open source distributed storage system. It is built by Inktank, which Red Hat (RHT) acquired, also back in May.

SUSE’s new storage platform is debuting within a crowded market. Red Hat and other open source vendors already have established storage products based on Linux, and a plethora of closed-source solutions exist as well.

SUSE hopes to outprice the competition, however. It’s pricing the new offering at 0.1 cents per Gigabyte per month, a rate it hopes will attract companies seeking to build next-generation storage infrastructure using low-cost commodity hardware.

“Data growth has created a critical need for reliable yet affordable storage solutions beyond the traditional, expensive proprietary solutions we’re used to,” SUSE said in a statement. “SUSE Enterprise Storage is a highly scalable and resilient software-based storage solution that allows enterprises to move away from proprietary, hardware-centric storage solutions to software-based storage that delivers functionality comparable to mid- and high-end storage products but at a fraction of the cost.”