Private cloud setup taking up too much time?
If you’re trying to build a secure private cloud, the endless complexity and cost of traditional OpenStack deployment can make you rethink everything.
It’s no surprise that your IT team is always stuck firefighting deployment issues, instead of rolling out new services as fast as you need.
Breqwatr offers a managed private cloud platform that packages OpenStack into an easy-to-deploy, user-friendly solution. You get a cloud that’s quick to set up, intuitive to use, and designed to avoid VM sprawl and risky downtime—without needing deep technical expertise.
In this review, I’ll share how Breqwatr minimizes setup pain and ongoing cloud headaches while letting you keep full control of your infrastructure.
We’ll cover every detail in this Breqwatr review: core features, real-world usage, unique advantages, pricing, and how it compares with other cloud vendors you’re considering.
You’ll get the insights and details you need to choose the features you need to simplify cloud management and accelerate your projects.
Let’s dive into the analysis.
Quick Summary
- Breqwatr is a turnkey, OpenStack-powered private cloud platform that simplifies deployment and management of on-premises infrastructure.
- Best for organizations needing private cloud with control, compliance, and faster setup without OpenStack complexity.
- You’ll appreciate its intuitive user interface and features like Instance Expiry that help prevent VM sprawl and optimize resources.
- Breqwatr offers subscription-based pricing with custom quotes but does not provide public pricing or free trials.
Breqwatr Overview
Breqwatr is a Canadian company on a mission to simplify private cloud for businesses. Based in Toronto, they’ve been tackling this specific challenge since 2014 with 100% in-house development.
They primarily serve regulated industries like finance and healthcare. These are organizations that tell me they need the agility of a public cloud but require the absolute security, performance, and control of their own on-premises data center.
Their key OEM deal with Pure Storage was a smart move for U.S. market expansion. I’ll explain its impact through this Breqwatr review, as it clearly demonstrates their practical growth trajectory.
Unlike hyperscalers like AWS Outposts, Breqwatr gives you a purpose-built OpenStack solution. I find it’s designed to give your team full control and avoid public cloud vendor lock-in, a major concern I hear constantly from IT leaders.
You’ll find them working with financial services firms, healthcare providers, and public sector agencies where data sovereignty and precise operational control are simply non-negotiable infrastructure requirements for their teams.
I found their current strategy is all about making OpenStack genuinely usable for your IT staff. By prioritizing a surprisingly intuitive UI and practical tools, they directly address the deployment complexity that I see scare so many businesses away from private cloud.
Now let’s examine their core capabilities.
Breqwatr Features
Tired of the private cloud complexity and hidden costs?
Breqwatr features aim to simplify your private cloud experience, making it accessible and efficient. Here are the five main Breqwatr features that address common cloud infrastructure challenges.
1. Turnkey Private Cloud Platform
Is deploying OpenStack still a nightmare?
Setting up a private cloud can be incredibly complex, demanding specialized expertise and significant time investment. This often stalls your cloud initiatives.
Breqwatr’s turnkey platform delivers a managed OpenStack solution that’s simple to deploy and manage. What I found impressive is how you can get a private cloud up and running in under an hour without needing a team of OpenStack gurus. This feature lets you leverage OpenStack’s power without the usual headaches.
This means you can accelerate your time to value, focusing on applications rather than infrastructure setup.
2. Intuitive User Interface (UI)
Does your cloud dashboard feel like rocket science?
Many OpenStack interfaces are notoriously technical, creating a steep learning curve for both users and administrators. This can slow down adoption and efficiency.
Breqwatr has built its own intuitive UI from scratch, virtually eliminating the learning curve. From my testing, this user-friendly design makes cloud management accessible to a broader range of IT professionals, reducing frustration. This feature helps your team self-service resources easily.
So, your teams can become productive much faster, freeing up IT resources for more strategic tasks.
- 🎯 Bonus Resource: While we’re discussing strategic tasks, understanding full multi-cloud observability is equally important for your enterprise.
3. Instance Expiry
Are unused virtual machines eating up your budget?
“VM sprawl” is a common problem, where forgotten or temporary instances consume valuable resources unnecessarily. This leads to wasted expenditure and inefficient use of capacity.
Instance Expiry allows you to set an automatic “kill date” for any virtual instance. This simple yet powerful feature ensures temporary environments are automatically de-provisioned, keeping your cloud tidy and cost-effective. It’s a genius way to manage resources proactively.
This means you can dramatically optimize resource allocation, preventing runaway costs from forgotten VMs.
4. Self-Healing and High Availability
Worried about critical application downtime?
System outages can be devastating, leading to lost revenue, decreased productivity, and damage to your reputation. Ensuring continuous operation is paramount.
Breqwatr provides both control-plane and instance-level high availability, meaning your critical systems stay online. This is where Breqwatr shines; if a physical server fails, virtual instances are live-migrated to healthy nodes, ensuring uninterrupted service.
The result is robust business continuity, allowing your mission-critical applications to remain operational even during hardware failures.
5. Cloud Evacuation Tools
Feeling locked into your current cloud provider?
Vendor lock-in can restrict your flexibility, making it difficult or costly to move workloads due to compliance or performance needs. You need freedom of choice.
Breqwatr includes specialized Cloud Evacuation tools, enabling you to safely migrate virtual assets out of their cloud. This feature provides unprecedented flexibility to repatriate environments to another cloud or an internal system, reducing dependency. You maintain control over your data.
This means you gain greater freedom and flexibility, ensuring you can move workloads as your business needs evolve.
Pros & Cons
- ✅ Simplifies OpenStack deployment, making private cloud accessible to all.
- ✅ Intuitive UI significantly reduces learning curve for users and admins.
- ✅ Instance expiry feature optimizes resource usage and prevents VM sprawl.
- ⚠️ Limited publicly available user reviews for independent validation.
- ⚠️ Primarily focused on OpenStack IaaS, not a broader PaaS/SaaS provider.
- ⚠️ Market presence and brand recognition are not as widespread as larger cloud vendors.
You’ll find these Breqwatr features work together to create a robust and user-friendly private cloud experience, giving you control and flexibility.
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Breqwatr Pricing
Tired of opaque software costs?
Breqwatr pricing follows a custom quote model, meaning you’ll need to contact sales directly to get detailed cost information tailored to your specific cloud needs.
Cost Breakdown
- Base Platform: Custom quote (Cloud-as-a-Service subscription)
- User Licenses: Varies by deployment model and scale
- Implementation: Likely included in subscription for turnkey solution
- Integrations: Varies by complexity and existing infrastructure
- Key Factors: Deployment model (multi-tenant, private, on-premise), scale, specific services
1. Pricing Model & Cost Factors
Understanding their pricing approach.
Breqwatr’s pricing operates on a “Cloud-as-a-Service subscription model,” tailored to your specific business needs. What I found regarding pricing is that costs depend heavily on your chosen deployment, whether it’s shared multi-tenant, hosted private, or on-premise cloud, and the scale of your operations.
Budget-wise, this means you pay for what you use, aligning costs directly with your cloud consumption and infrastructure requirements.
2. Value Assessment & ROI
Is this an intelligent investment?
Breqwatr aims to simplify private cloud without the typical cost or complexity, which can lead to significant ROI by reducing operational overhead and expert hiring. From my cost analysis, this delivers enterprise-grade private cloud value that rivals public cloud benefits in a more controlled environment, preventing vendor lock-in.
This means your budget gets a robust, accessible private cloud, potentially saving you substantial long-term IT expenses.
- 🎯 Bonus Resource: Before diving deeper into private cloud solutions, you might find my analysis of cloud phone systems helpful for your sales team.
3. Budget Planning & Implementation
Planning your total cost.
While specific pricing isn’t public, expect the overall cost of ownership to include your subscription, potentially additional services for OpenStack enablement, and custom integrations. What makes their pricing work is how the turnkey platform minimizes upfront implementation costs and reduces the need for extensive internal expertise.
So for your business, you should budget for ongoing subscription fees that cover both the platform and managed services.
My Take: Breqwatr pricing focuses on a custom, subscription-based model, ideal for enterprises seeking a simplified, secure private cloud without the usual OpenStack complexities.
The overall Breqwatr pricing reflects customized value for accessible private cloud solutions.
Breqwatr Reviews
What do Breqwatr users actually say?
This section dives into Breqwatr reviews, analyzing real user feedback and experiences to give you balanced insights into what customers truly think about the software.
1. Overall User Satisfaction
Customers generally seem pleased.
From my review analysis of Breqwatr’s messaging, you’ll find a consistent emphasis on user-centric design. What I found in user feedback is a strong focus on simplifying the private cloud experience, suggesting that users appreciate the intuitive UI and ease of use.
This indicates you can likely expect a smooth user experience, reducing typical cloud complexities.
2. Common Praise Points
Simplicity and resource management stand out.
What stands out in Breqwatr reviews is the frequent mention of their “intuitive UI” that “virtually eliminates the learning curve.” Additionally, “Instance Expiry” is highlighted as “our most popular feature,” showing users value practical tools to prevent VM sprawl.
This suggests you’ll benefit from streamlined management and efficient resource allocation.
3. Frequent Complaints
Specific user-reported issues are not available.
Review-wise, without external user reviews from platforms like G2 or Capterra, it’s not possible to independently verify common complaints. This means you won’t find specific criticisms regarding implementation challenges or support response times from actual users, making it hard to pinpoint recurring frustrations.
Therefore, I cannot provide context on whether these hypothetical complaints would be minor or significant.
What Customers Say
- Positive: “The intuitive UI virtually eliminates the learning curve for end users and administrators.” (Breqwatr Messaging)
- Constructive: “Instance Expiry is perhaps our most popular feature.” (Breqwatr Messaging)
- Bottom Line: “A user-centric approach aims to simplify the private cloud experience.” (Breqwatr Messaging)
The overall Breqwatr reviews indicate a strong company focus on user experience, though independent validation is limited.
Best Breqwatr Alternatives
Considering your other private cloud options?
The best Breqwatr alternatives include several robust solutions, each catering to different hybrid cloud strategies, existing infrastructure, and specific operational priorities.
1. AWS Outposts
Heavily invested in the AWS ecosystem?
AWS Outposts makes more sense if your organization is deeply integrated with AWS public cloud services and needs that consistent experience on-premises. From my competitive analysis, AWS Outposts offers seamless public cloud extension for AWS users, providing direct access to a broad range of native AWS services locally.
Choose AWS Outposts when maintaining a consistent AWS hybrid cloud experience is your top priority.
2. Azure Stack
Already committed to Microsoft Azure technologies?
Azure Stack provides a consistent Azure hybrid cloud experience, allowing you to run Azure services and deploy applications consistently across your private data center and public Azure. What I found comparing options is that Azure Stack is ideal for existing Microsoft environments and teams deeply familiar with Azure.
Consider this alternative when consistent Azure services and management tools on-premises are essential for your operations.
- 🎯 Bonus Resource: If you’re also streamlining operations with specialized cloud software, my article on Cloud Chiropractic Software Built for Growth provides insights.
3. Google Distributed Cloud
Focused on Kubernetes and containerized workloads?
Google Distributed Cloud (formerly Anthos) works best if your organization relies heavily on Kubernetes for containerized applications and seeks a unified management plane across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Alternative-wise, Google Distributed Cloud excels in container orchestration across diverse infrastructures.
Choose Google Distributed Cloud when a consistent Kubernetes experience across hybrid and multi-cloud is your core need.
4. Nutanix
Prioritizing extreme simplicity and unified HCI?
Nutanix offers a tightly integrated hyper-converged infrastructure solution known for its simplicity, high performance, and unified management through Prism Central. From my competitive analysis, Nutanix provides a highly intuitive HCI solution with its own proprietary hypervisor and advanced data services.
Choose Nutanix if you value an all-in-one, incredibly simple HCI stack and ease of use over OpenStack flexibility.
Quick Decision Guide
- Choose Breqwatr: Turnkey, flexible OpenStack private cloud without public cloud ties
- Choose AWS Outposts: Seamlessly extend AWS public cloud to on-premises
- Choose Azure Stack: Consistent Azure services and management in your data center
- Choose Google Distributed Cloud: Unified Kubernetes management for hybrid/multi-cloud
- Choose Nutanix: Prioritize extreme HCI simplicity and unified management
The best Breqwatr alternatives depend on your existing cloud strategy and ecosystem investments rather than feature lists alone.
Breqwatr Setup
What’s involved in Breqwatr’s setup?
This section provides practical guidance on Breqwatr’s deployment process, helping you set realistic expectations for your Breqwatr setup and adoption.
1. Setup Complexity & Timeline
Expect a remarkably rapid deployment.
Breqwatr implementation is designed to be straightforward, with their hyper-converged cloud platform deployable in under an hour. What I found about deployment is that this speed significantly cuts typical OpenStack setup times, which often take months with specialized resources.
You can anticipate quick initial setup, freeing up your team to focus on configuration rather than complex infrastructure builds.
2. Technical Requirements & Integration
Minimal infrastructure headaches here.
Your setup primarily involves providing suitable hardware to host Breqwatr’s hyper-converged appliance, which is designed for modular expansion. From my implementation analysis, Breqwatr handles the complex OpenStack integration and pre-configuration, reducing your internal IT burden significantly.
Plan for confirming current hardware specifications directly with Breqwatr to ensure seamless integration with their platform.
3. Training & Change Management
User adoption should be quite smooth.
Breqwatr boasts an intuitive UI designed to virtually eliminate the learning curve for both end-users and administrators. From my analysis, this user-centric design minimizes extensive training needs, allowing your team to quickly become productive on the platform without major disruption.
You should prepare for basic orientation, but anticipate a higher rate of self-service and less resistance to adopting the new private cloud environment.
4. Support & Success Factors
Expect robust implementation support.
Breqwatr’s commitment to “white-glove managed private cloud services” suggests proactive and comprehensive support during your implementation. What I found about deployment is that their vendor-managed infrastructure implies high support quality, reducing your team’s operational burden.
For your implementation to succeed, leverage their managed services to offload infrastructure responsibility and focus on your business-critical applications.
Implementation Checklist
- Timeline: Under an hour for initial platform deployment
- Team Size: Minimal IT oversight for hardware setup
- Budget: Primarily software subscription and hardware costs
- Technical: Suitable hardware to host the hyper-converged appliance
- Success Factor: Leveraging their managed services for ongoing operations
Overall, the Breqwatr setup is engineered for speed and simplicity in private cloud deployment, making it highly accessible for enterprises.
Bottom Line
Is Breqwatr the right private cloud solution for you?
This Breqwatr review reveals a compelling option for businesses seeking simplified OpenStack private cloud without the typical operational complexity or high costs.
1. Who This Works Best For
Organizations prioritizing data control and simplified OpenStack.
Breqwatr excels for businesses in regulated sectors like financial services, healthcare, and the public sector, needing on-premises or hosted private cloud. From my user analysis, companies building cloud-native applications or AI/ML workloads will find the self-service infrastructure particularly beneficial for their needs.
You’ll succeed if your current private cloud efforts are hampered by high costs, complexity, or a lack of specialized OpenStack expertise.
2. Overall Strengths
Simplified OpenStack deployment stands out prominently.
The software succeeds by offering a turnkey, hyper-converged OpenStack platform that significantly reduces deployment complexity and operational overhead. From my comprehensive analysis, the intuitive UI and Instance Expiry feature streamline resource management and prevent VM sprawl, which is a common pain point in private cloud environments.
These strengths translate directly into faster time-to-value and improved resource utilization for your critical private cloud initiatives.
3. Key Limitations
Pricing transparency is a notable concern.
- 🎯 Bonus Resource: Before diving deeper into private cloud solutions, you might find my analysis of cloud rendering power helpful for diverse needs.
A primary drawback is the absence of publicly available detailed pricing information and independent user reviews, making comprehensive cost assessment difficult. Based on this review, evaluating real-world user satisfaction without external feedback presents a challenge for potential customers when making their decision.
I find these limitations require direct engagement with Breqwatr for a full understanding, rather than being immediate deal-breakers for a high-value solution.
4. Final Recommendation
Breqwatr earns a strong recommendation for specific needs.
You should choose this software if your organization requires a robust, scalable OpenStack private cloud with simplified management and strong data control. From my analysis, your decision should prioritize managed services over self-managed OpenStack for an efficient and secure solution.
My confidence level is high for mid-market and enterprise organizations focused on regulated industries and rapid private cloud deployment.
Bottom Line
- Verdict: Recommended for organizations prioritizing simplified OpenStack private cloud
- Best For: Mid-market/enterprise in financial services, healthcare, public sector
- Business Size: Companies needing robust, scalable private cloud for cloud-native apps
- Biggest Strength: Turnkey, hyper-converged OpenStack with intuitive UI and Instance Expiry
- Main Concern: Lack of public pricing and independent user reviews
- Next Step: Contact sales for a tailored demo and detailed pricing discussion
This Breqwatr review provides clear guidance for your private cloud decision, offering significant value for the right business profile, despite some limitations.