Random Thoughts: On OpenStack

IMG_20151108_143217

OpenStack is over 5 years old now.  I have seen the project from days when many pundits claimed its not needed or it is a dead project or what not. These are some of my thoughts about the overall project & where it i s headed.

Community: I think OpenStack is one of the biggest project so far written in python. The latest release has over 5000 developers. Every release has followed a cycle & delivered timely.

Marketing Hype: OpenStack no more enjoys the hype it used to years back, tech scene changes so rapidly. 

Foundation: I think forming OpenStack foundation was one of the best thing happened to the project. The folks are working really hard to push project forward in whatever best possible way they can.

Foundation Members: OpenStack has almost every enterprise backing, check this link if you don’t believe me .  All these organization wants to make money out of it & hence they all have aspirations. Most of them have full time employes hacking/contributing to upstream OpenStack code.

Definition of OpenStack: It has been over 5 years & we have not come to a conclusion what components must/must-not have to make the product “OpenStack Powered” I know Rob & others been working hard on this, not sure when will this be finally a reality.

VC’s putting $$$:  Vc’s believed in Openstack & startups building services around OpenStack ended up getting funded over a billion $. Source

Acquisitions & Closures: In this 5 years tenure we saw a lot of these smaller startups getting acquired by traditional vendors like Piston, CloudScaling, BlueBox.  At same time we heard about Nebula closing down & HP public cloud getting shut.

Job Market: OpenStack created a great job market & even 5 years down the line being an OpenStack developer can get you good $$. If you have contributed upstream then companies will be after you to hire.

The dream of Federated Cloud: I am still waiting to see if  I will even be able to share my workload simultaneously on Rackspace, IBM Cloud or others with single OpenStack dashboard. This dream which was sold to us, I don’t see happening at all.  After fighting with Simon all these years over API I have to agree having Amazon API support as native would have increased OpenStack’s adoption.

Too many install Options: I have to agree many ways to do the same thing can be confusing. Installing OpenStack is still hard and perhaps will always remain so. I won’t be surprised if someone writes a detailed thesis on the installation procedure & options [with comparison to all devOp tools] for OpenStack & upgrading OpenStack.

Pain of managing Install/API doc:  Every new release has 100+ new flags & coordinating with developers or upstream contributor is not an easy job.  Anne & team are doing excellent work. They will love to see your contribution & this is the best place if you want to get started with  contributing to OpenStack project.

PS: I was one of the core OpenStack documentation contributor &  still a community coordinator for OpenStack project in India.