Freedom in the Clouds: OpenStack Foundation Launch

On September 19, 2012 · Leave a Comment · In Cloud Computing, OpenStack

Since its inception just two years ago, OpenStack has been the model for truly open and free cloud operating system software. Today, September 19, 2012, OpenStack adds yet another feather to its cap. Today marks an important milestone for the OpenStack community and for the open cloud movement: the official launch of the OpenStack Foundation!

Why OpenStack Foundation?

To be truly open and free and not be driven by specific corporate agendas, an open source initiative cannot be controlled by one or two companies. While Rackspace provided great leadership and made OpenStack what it is today, the company wisely realized that to maintain the open spirit of the project, the community needs to shape the future and ensure the growth and success of the fledgling project.

The discussions and participation so far in establishing the foundation structure have been outstanding. The foundation has made great progress in establishing the charter, onboarding members, and creating a board of directors,. The Board is made up of 24 total members, including 8 Individual, 8 Gold and 8 Platinum Directors, each of which represents a different class of members. While the basics are in place, there is still much work to do to ensure the successful execution of the foundation mission, which is to serve and support the community and ecosystem to ensure the growth and success of OpenStack as a ubiquitous cloud computing platform.

The response to the foundation has been truly amazing. Today, the OpenStack Foundation has over 5,600 Individual Members from 88 countries across six continents. These members are come from 850 different organizations are very diverse, ranging from start ups and universities all the way to the world’s largest global enterprises. The foundation has already secured more than $10 million in committed funding as of September 2012 through Member dues and corporate sponsorship.

Dell (the company I work for) was the first tier 1 to launch an OpenStack solution, and as a Gold Member of the OpenStack Foundation, we are looking forward to the continued expansion of our OpenStack involvement and leadership around the world. We have two members on the Board of Directors, which will provide strategic and financial oversight of the OpenStack Foundation.

Looking Back: Success by the Numbers

The success of open source project depends entirely on passionate developers and users, regular release cadence with large code contributions, and user groups and vibrant communities.

These numbers speak for themselves:

OpenStack software has been downloaded more than 300,000 times from the central code repositories, not counting the various distributions
It has more than 550,000 lines of code, written mostly in Python
More than 573 developers have contributed to OpenStack since its inception, with 464 contributing in the last 12 months (http://www.ohloh.net/p/openstack)
Local community leaders have established more than 38 global user groups (http://wiki.openstack.org/OpenStackUserGroups)
There have been more than 1.1M visitors to OpenStack.org

Who is Using OpenStack?

Being first to the market with an complete end-to-end OpenStack solution, our team at Dell has more than 18 months experience with real-word deployments and field experience. As we look at the dozens of customers who have used our solution, we find that OpenStack customers tend to be organizations of every shape and size including the largest global enterprises across multiple verticals, CDN, hosting, and other service providers, social media, eCommerce, media, and gaming companies. Universities and government research institutions are among the early adopters as well.

Among the chief reasons these companies are looking at OpenStack are for control, flexibility, proven scalability, and open standards compatibility.

Boston OpenStack User Group Meetup Celebrates

OpenStack celebrated the Foundation launch party around the world on Sep 19th, 2012, and we joined in the party at the Boston OpenStack User Group meetup. Dell organized the meetup and the pizza and OpenStack Foundation sponsored drinks with an open bar!

We had a great time. Nearly 35 stackers showed up, many of them joining the meetup group for the first time and attending their first meetup. We talked about the foundation and its role, a bit about its history, and where it is going. We also had a lively discussion around experiences and challenges around OpenStack deployments and different types of use cases out there.

Many folks hung around, networking, socializing, and chatting about various things about cloud, OpenStack, and the market until 10 pm that night.

Microsoft provided their wonderful NERD center location for the meetup overlooking the Boston skyline and Charles river. Check out the pictures from this event: