A new startup that wants to help developers spin up virtual data centers more easily has just emerged from stealth mode: Pensa Inc., which today launched the first of its products alongside the hiring of a high-profile chief executive officer to lead its efforts.

The new CEO is Tom Joyce (pictured), who previously served as a senior executive at Dell Technologies Inc., EMC Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Co. His most recent role saw him serve as the global general manager of the Quest Software business unit at Dell. Prior to that, Joyce held several roles at EMC and HPE, where he served as senior vice president of corporate development.

The company’s core technology, the Pensa Maestro platform, is a cloud-based system for enterprises that want to spin up software-based information technology environments where they can run cloud-hosted applications in a secure manner. Pensa said Maestro can be used to deploy a fully software-defined data center that includes all of the necessary compute, networking, storage and security components.

The company also announced the first product on the Maestro platform, called Pensa Lab. It’s an on-demand software as a service product that allows users to create “virtual IT test labs” based on OpenStack and VMware Inc. software in order to test their applications before they’re deployed more widely.

Pensa makes some big claims about its product’s capabilities, saying it eliminates all human errors that are a main cause of system outages, and can reduce application deployment times by half. In addition, the company reckons Pensa Lab can lower the costs of creating IT test lab infrastructure by up to 55 percent.

Joyce said Pensa Lab was needed because many organizations lack the skills needed to spin up the cloud infrastructure they need to stay competitive. “IT managers are under tremendous pressure to deliver multi-cloud flexibility, more secure systems, and DevOps delivery models,” he said. “Faced with exploding complexity and scale, they can no longer do their jobs without intelligent automation technology.”

Before joining Pensa, Joyce appeared on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile live streaming studio, ahead of the 2017 Mobile World Congress event in February, where he discussed software-defined networks in depth with host John Furrier.

Pensa said that Pensa Lab is available now, priced at $1,500 per month per license.

Image: SiliconANGLE