In 2010 Rackspace and NASA came together with a vision to create an open source platform which will help in building and managing various cloud platforms for public and private cloud ecosystem. They went ahead to create OpenStack, a free, open source platform with many groups of interconnected projects that enable processing of storage and networking resources throughout a data centre.
OpenStack has evolved over the years and has reached to a new level of maturity. OpenStack and its ecosystem have shown good improvement in the recent past to expand their users. Leading research firms like Gartner and IDC are predicting an upward trend in adopting OpenStack ecosystem. Even the OpenStack community has started addressing the complexity and skills issues. Mirantis, recent funding of $100M in 2015 has cemented its growth.
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Why OpenStack is different?
There are various reasons why OpenStack is placed differently and is worthy of your attention.
Reason 1: Open Source
The first and foremost reason is that it is an open source platform. Each component gets released under the terms of the Apache license. That means a developer can make changes in a component and release it under a different license. Later that release is turned into a feature by the OpenStack community. Industry leader strongly believe that open source and open development is the only way to standardize the cloud ecosystem.
Reason 2: Global acceptance
Another reason which place OpenStack differently is its acceptance. Many large to medium size companies are accepting OpenStack ecosystem. Dell, AMD, Cisco, HP, AT&T, Broadcom and Yahoo are to name few. Even some of the Linux heavyweights are coming closer to OpenStack, including Red Hat, SUSE and Canonical.
Reason 3: Productization
This has proved to be the biggest game changer. Productizing OpenStack – delivering as a packaged distribution and now as appliances has pushed its adoption to new heights. Customers have started liking the idea of “software-defined infrastructure driven by OpenStack.”
Conclusion:
I believe that OpenStack should allow or find a way through which other cloud providers along with its rivals like AWS, Google, and Azure can contribute to OpenStack ecosystem. Amazon is considered to be the key rival for OpenStack, but if we study the use case of VMware support for OpenStack, we will understand how even a potential rival can become compatible with OpenStack
I truly believe that OpenStack is here to demonstrate growth and do a serious business in the cloud industry. It will continue to serve as a disruptive technology. I look forward to seeing how it unfolds, and what are the upcoming changes / updates in OpenStack ecosystem.
To know more email: marketing@calsoftinc.com
Contributed by: Anupam Bhide | Calsoft inc
Calsoft Openstack Expertise
Calsoft has been actively contributing to the OpenStack community since its inception in 2010. At Calsoft we have created a dedicated OpenStack COE to assist Storage, Networking and Cloud ISVs in adopting and unleashing the power of open source cloud.
Awesome post Anupam. Definitely OpenStack is diverse in so many ways. It provides enormous benefits and enables startups, small to mid-scale business or even very large enterprise adopt and run their Infrastructure.
Another reason that I would like to add here is its solid security. It has outstanding security features that keep you secure all the time.