Skip navigation

Roundup: Is OpenStack a Game-Changer?

Rackspace's announcement of the OpenStack open source cloud platform has triggered lots of reaction around the web. Here's a roundup of noteworthy commentary and analysis on OpenStack's debut.

Rackspace has unveiled OpenStack, a new open source cloud platform that will incorporate code from Rackspace's cloud services as well as the NASA Nebula Cloud Platform. The announcement has triggered tons of reaction around the web. Here's a roundup of noteworthy commentary and analysis on OpenStack's debut:

  • Rackspace Open Sources Its Cloud Platform - Cloudwatcher Geva Perry raises some key questions: "It looks like we are entering the 'Stack Wars,' with the two leading IaaS cloud stacks being Amazon's (with Eucalyptus as the private cloud version of the Amazon stack) and now OpenStack. It will be interesting to see how VMWare, Microsoft and Google all respond to this move."
  • OpenStack: game changing open source cloud platform - RightScale CTO Thorsten von Eicken: "The bottom line is that we believe this to be a potentially game changing event. The reason is that RackSpace has committed itself to a true open source project, meaning that it’s not just source thrown over the wall into the open, but also an open design process, an open development process, and an open community."
  • OpenStack Wants to Be Android of The Cloud - From Om Malik at GigaOm: “What Android is to smartphone operating systems, we want OpenStack to be for the cloud,” says Lew Moorman, President of Rackspace’s cloud operations. While a whole slew of companies are trying to offer up their own unique twists of enterprise, carrier and hybrid clouds, OpenStack offers a way to commoditize the entire cloud infrastructure.
  • Is the Open Stack Cloud Announcement a Big Deal? - Bob Warfield at SmoothSpan: "There is a lot of nervousness in the Not-Amazon-But-Wanna-Be-Cloud-Kings herd. It’s understandable. Not much to point to for scale in the Cloud world but Amazon. OpenStack is a good response."
  • Rackspace , NASA Join Forces for Open Cloud Ecosystem - From ReadWriteCloud: "Coming into this week at OSCON, we were starting to speculate if the open-source movement had lost a bit of its clout or its will to protect the cloud as much as it had the open Web. The Oracle acquisition of Sun Microsystems is proving to be a brutal blow for OpenSolaris. And the future of MySQL is still a question mark. OpenStack looks like it is a step in the right direction."
  • Opening The Rackspace Cloud - Blog from Rackspace's Lew Moorman: "For our customers, we think there are many benefits that flow from these community gains. Not only will this help our offers develop faster and more transparently, but our customers can run private editions of our core systems in house or in our managed hosting operation."
  • As cloud platforms battle for credibility, OpenStack is pretty solid - Forrester analyst James Staten: OpenStack "might just have the more credible story enterprise infrastructure & operations professionals have been waiting on."
  • OpenStack Targets One Million Machine Nebula - Timothy Prickett Morgan at the Register: "The problem with the tools being created and sold by Eucalyptus Systems, VMware, and others trying to provide tools to fluff up clouds is that the scale that NASA and Rackspace are wrestling with is beyond the capability of these products."
  • How to set a Cloud Free in 47 simple steps - Some background and perspective from Mark Collier of Rackspace: "We’ve got to build our own army, out of all of the people out there who have an interest in seeing an open cloud emerge."