Morpheus Data LLC today debuted the latest version of its namesake cloud orchestration platform, which packs enhancements aimed at simplifying infrastructure provisioning and cost tracking.

Morpheus’ platform enables enterprises to manage their public cloud and on-premises environments centrally. The offering started out as an internal tool at private equity firm Bertram Capital, which decided to spin it out into a separate business in 2015. Morpheus, the startup that emerged from the spinoff, has since amassed hundreds of users including McDonald’s Corp. and the U.S. Air Force.

Today’s 5.0 platform release adds a self-service infrastructure provisioning interface. Usually, when developers need a new resource such as a cloud instance or a database for a project, they have to submit a support ticket to the information technology team. Morpheus’ self-service interface replaces this process with a catalog that lets developers browse from a selection of approved resources and select the ones they need by adding them to a shopping cart.

The feature is aimed at providing two benefits. For developers and the other employees in a company who need access to IT resources, the upside is a more streamlined provisioning process. Administrators, in turn, can free up time some of the time spent on responding to user requests by directing them to the self-service catalog.

Also new in today’s release is an expanded set of cost tracking features. A new Invoices section in the Morpheus interface allows finance teams to track their companies’ spending on public clouds and on-premises infrastructure components such as VMware Inc.’s vSphere. Another enhancement is a scheduling tool that can automatically generate cost reports at specific intervals determined by users. 

The additions strengthen Morpheus’ value proposition for companies adopting FinOps, a relatively new accounting approach focused on lowering cloud expenses that’s rapidly gaining steam in the enterprise. Lowering infrastructure costs was already a key pillar of the startup’s strategy before today’s update. On its website, Morpheus claims its platform can help companies reduce their cloud costs by 30% through increased efficiency.

Capping off the new platform release is support for an expanded selection of so-called bare-metal-as-a-service infrastructure providers and improved product integrations. Morpheus has enhanced the connectors it provides for Microsoft Corp.’s Azure public cloud and VMware’s vCloud Director software, as well as the connectors it offers for a number of other third-party solutions. 

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