Hosted Private Cloud for Regulated Industries

Regulated industries don’t get to treat infrastructure as an afterthought. Whether you’re storing patient records, processing payment data, or handling government contracts, the cloud you run on has direct implications for your compliance posture, your audit outcomes, and your liability exposure.

OpenMetal’s hosted private cloud gives mid-market and regulated organizations dedicated, single-tenant infrastructure built on OpenStack and Ceph, operated within certified data center facilities across the US, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. You get the operational simplicity of managed hardware with the isolation, access controls, and documentation support that compliance frameworks actually require.

What Is a Compliance-Ready Hosted Private Cloud?

A compliance-ready hosted private cloud combines the operational simplicity of managed infrastructure with the data isolation, access controls, and audit documentation that regulated industries require. Unlike public cloud environments where your workloads share physical resources with other tenants, a hosted private cloud gives your organization dedicated hardware, a single-tenant architecture, and full administrative access to configure your environment to meet specific regulatory frameworks.

OpenMetal’s hosted private cloud is built on OpenStack and Ceph, deployed on dedicated hardware in certified data center facilities, and delivered as a fixed-cost, day-two-ready environment. You get root access to a fully isolated cloud without building or managing the physical infrastructure yourself.

Is OpenMetal HIPAA Compliant?

Yes. OpenMetal holds HIPAA compliance directly and operates within data center facilities that also support HIPAA requirements. Ashburn (US East) and Los Angeles (US West) both carry HIPAA-supporting certifications at the facility level.

For healthcare organizations, this matters because HIPAA compliance spans both the software environment and the physical facility. OpenMetal can provide a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) and supports the technical safeguards HIPAA requires, including access controls, audit logging, and data encryption at rest and in transit.

Applicable use cases: Electronic health records (EHR) hosting, medical imaging storage, health data analytics pipelines, telehealth platforms, and clinical research environments handling PHI.

Which Data Center Certifications Does OpenMetal’s Infrastructure Carry?

OpenMetal operates in four data center locations across the US, Europe, and Asia. Certification coverage varies by region:

Ashburn, Virginia (US East) — NTT Facility SOC 1, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, ISO 50001, PCI DSS, NIST 800-53 HIGH, HIPAA

Los Angeles, California (US West) — Digital Realty SOC 2, SOC 3, PCI DSS, NIST 800-53 mapping, HIPAA mapping, ISO 27001 mapping

Amsterdam, Netherlands (EU) — Digital Realty SOC Type 1 and Type 2, PCI DSS, ISO 27001, ISO 50001, ISO 22301

Singapore (Asia-Pacific) — Digital Realty SIN10 SOC 2, SOC 3, PCI DSS, ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 27001, ISO 50001, SS564, MAS (Monetary Authority of Singapore)

These are facility-level certifications held by the data center operators. OpenMetal holds HIPAA compliance directly, with SOC 2 Type II certification currently in progress.

What Regulated Industries Can Use OpenMetal’s Hosted Private Cloud?

Healthcare and Life Sciences

Healthcare organizations face strict data residency, access control, and audit trail requirements under HIPAA and HITECH. OpenMetal’s single-tenant architecture means patient data never shares physical infrastructure with other organizations, and full root access allows teams to implement the technical controls required for HIPAA compliance.

Specific capabilities relevant to healthcare: isolated network segments via OpenStack Neutron, encrypted Ceph block and object storage, role-based access control (RBAC) through OpenStack Keystone, and comprehensive audit logging. Ashburn and LA both operate within HIPAA-supporting facilities.

Financial Services and Fintech

PCI DSS compliance is non-negotiable for any organization handling cardholder data. All four OpenMetal data center locations carry PCI DSS certification at the facility level. For fintech companies and banks, the single-tenant model eliminates the shared-resource risk that makes public cloud PCI compliance more complex and expensive to audit.

Fixed-cost pricing also matters here: financial services organizations often face unpredictable public cloud bills during high-transaction periods. OpenMetal’s flat monthly pricing makes infrastructure costs predictable regardless of data transfer volume.

Singapore’s MAS compliance support makes OpenMetal’s Asia-Pacific location a strong fit for financial services firms operating under Singapore’s financial regulatory framework.

Federal, State, and Local Government

Ashburn’s NIST 800-53 HIGH certification is significant for public sector organizations. NIST 800-53 HIGH represents the most stringent baseline in the NIST framework, covering systems where a security failure could have severe or catastrophic consequences.

For agencies evaluating FedRAMP-adjacent solutions or organizations operating under FISMA, the combination of NIST 800-53 HIGH facility support, single-tenant architecture, and full root access provides a strong compliance foundation. OpenMetal’s proximity to the DC metro area from Ashburn also provides low-latency access for federal and government contractor workloads.

Legal and Professional Services

Law firms and professional services organizations handling privileged client data have growing obligations under state bar association data security requirements and client contractual requirements. While legal tech doesn’t carry a single federal compliance framework like HIPAA, the practical requirements map closely: data isolation, access controls, audit trails, and documented security practices.

A hosted private cloud eliminates the shared-tenancy risk inherent in public cloud, which is increasingly relevant as clients require third-party infrastructure assessments before engaging outside counsel.

SaaS Providers Serving Regulated Industries

A SaaS company serving hospitals, financial institutions, or government agencies often inherits their customers’ compliance requirements. Hosting your application on a HIPAA-compliant, PCI DSS-certified, single-tenant private cloud simplifies your own compliance posture and gives enterprise customers cleaner answers during procurement security reviews.

OpenMetal’s SaaS provider use case is built around this exact scenario: predictable infrastructure costs, isolation guarantees, and the administrative access needed to configure your environment to your customers’ standards.

Research Institutions and Universities

Academic research involving human subjects, genomic data, or federally funded projects increasingly requires HIPAA-compliant or FISMA-compliant infrastructure. Research computing teams that need dedicated resources for sensitive workloads, without the cost and complexity of building on-premises infrastructure, are a direct fit for hosted private cloud.

Ceph’s high-throughput storage performance makes OpenMetal a practical option for large research datasets that would generate significant egress costs on public cloud.

How Does Single-Tenant Architecture Support Compliance?

Most compliance frameworks include requirements around logical and physical data separation. On public cloud, your data may be encrypted, but it shares physical servers and network infrastructure with other tenants. Demonstrating isolation to an auditor on a multi-tenant public cloud requires navigating the cloud provider’s shared responsibility documentation and shared security attestations.

On OpenMetal, your cloud runs on hardware dedicated exclusively to your organization. There are no other tenants on your nodes. This makes audits more straightforward because the isolation isn’t a policy or a configuration — it’s physical.

Full root access means you control the hypervisor layer, the network configuration, and the storage policies. You can implement and document your own controls rather than relying on a hyperscaler’s abstracted compliance tools.

What Is the Shared Responsibility Model on OpenMetal?

Understanding what OpenMetal manages versus what your team controls is important for compliance planning.

OpenMetal manages: Hardware provisioning and maintenance, data center physical security, network infrastructure, OpenStack and Ceph deployment, and initial cloud configuration.

You control: Operating systems, application deployment, user access policies, data encryption configuration, network segmentation, security patching cadence, and all compliance controls above the infrastructure layer.

This model gives your compliance and security teams the access they need to implement and document controls, without requiring you to manage physical hardware, power, cooling, or facility security.

How Does OpenMetal Pricing Work for Regulated Workloads?

Public cloud costs for regulated workloads are notoriously difficult to predict. Egress fees, data transfer costs, and the overhead of compliance tooling (logging, monitoring, encryption services) accumulate quickly.

OpenMetal uses fixed monthly pricing based on your hardware configuration. There are no per-request fees, no data egress surprises, and no separate charges for the infrastructure features regulated workloads rely on most. You can model your infrastructure cost with confidence, which matters when you’re building compliance budgets or justifying infrastructure decisions to a CFO or board.

You can explore configurations and pricing with the OpenMetal cloud deployment calculator.

What Does “Day Two Ready” Mean for Compliance Teams?

OpenMetal provisions a fully operational OpenStack private cloud. Your environment deploys with compute, block storage, object storage, and networking already operational, so your team can focus on application deployment and compliance configuration rather than standing up the platform itself.

For regulated organizations with tight timelines for audit readiness or vendor onboarding, this matters. You’re not waiting weeks to get infrastructure operational before your security team can begin documentation.

Can You Test OpenMetal Before Committing?

Yes. OpenMetal offers a Proof of Concept program that gives regulated organizations access to production-ready infrastructure before making a purchasing decision. This is useful if your security or compliance team needs to validate controls, run penetration tests, or evaluate the environment against your specific framework requirements before signing a contract.

Apply for a PoC or contact the team to discuss your compliance requirements directly.

A note on certification scope: The certifications listed in this article are held by OpenMetal’s data center facility operators (NTT and Digital Realty) unless otherwise noted. OpenMetal holds HIPAA compliance directly and is currently pursuing SOC 2 Type II certification. Compliance requirements vary by organization and use case. We recommend reviewing the specific facility spec pages and consulting with your compliance team when evaluating infrastructure for regulated workloads.