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OpenStack Summit[/caption]
The mad rush of first two days had whittled down a little, more developers are around than customers. I wore a little bit of developer hat, attended developer sessions of interest. I continued more conversations though. Here are some interesting conversations:
Conversation with Stephen Specter, Cloud Evangelist at HP
It was good to catch up with Stephen, whom I have known since the San Diego summit. Always helpful, enabling and connecting people. He chimed in with the need for highlighting workloads/ applications that can be run successfully on OpenStack cloud. He was also enthusiastic about Project Solum. He kindly offered to host a podcast with Atul and me. Link will be updated once it is up.
Conversations with Ben Golub, CEO of Docker
Had a briefing session with Ben on Docker. With all the attention Docker is getting now, he was focused on getting Docker to next levels and enabling CI and PaaS using Docker. Very unassuming, humble; able to traverse between technology and business seamlessly. Interesting usage of LXC technology, Docker is something to watch for.
Conversations with Manju Ramanathapura, Office of Technology & Planning, Hitachi
Given my earlier association with HDS, I was always rooting for Hitachi + OpenStack. They are a Gold member now, with an impressive demo of their OpenStack based Private Cloud solution. It was interesting to see their approach (to use open source and OpenStack) with their enterprise grade hardware. Even though they are new entrant to OpenStack market, given their strong enterprise customer base and their proven record, they are force to reckon with.
Conversations with Subbu Allamarajau, Chief Cloud Engineer at eBay
Though it was quick chat with Subbu, mostly around getting to know each other, it was impressive to see what a small team has achieved. They had not only leveraged on OpenStack features, have expanded on peripheral aspect of an operating cloud (monitoring, availability, alerting etc: refer to the ‘Cloud Milky Way’ slide #8 at his presentation deck), and have looked in to many competing/ existing solutions (CloudFoundry, OpenShift etc). It was also good to hear his views on multi-tenant vs single-tenant clouds (and as an extension, his views on container technologies).
Conversations with Jesse Proudman, CEO of BlueBox
Pumped by BlueBox’s Hosted OpenStack Private Cloud offering. I am thankful to their contributions to the OpenStack community and to the OpenStack Seattle meetup group. It was great to see their efforts and offerings validated by the analyst community. He also chimed in to the need for guidance on use cases and is interested in contributing to the efforts around this.
Conversations with Hui Cheng, CEO of United Stack
Caught up with Hui on what is UnitedStack upto; impressed us with the demo of their retro UI (a complete revamp using HTML5/ JS). Though their distribution is now a work in progress, they are working towards a one-click install distro. They are also planning on enabling complicated features like DR cooked in to the UI. Interesting statistics was around the demand from the Chinese market on their product: some 2000+ requests within a week of them announcing their distro. Granted we need more details on what category of customers they fall into, it is an impressive number. It only reiterates the demand for OpenStack in APAC region.
I also got the ‘OpenStack Cloud Computing Cookbook’ book signed by Kevin and Cody BunchJ, yay!
Some sessions that stood out
Case Study: Concur Delivering a SaaS application with Swift
Security on Openstack— Standing only session, needless to say whyJ
Diablo vs Havana: How OpenStack has Matured
How MercadoLibre Stores +1.4 Billion Images on OpenStack Object Storage (Repeat)
Open vSwitch Deep Dive: The Virtual Switch for OpenStack
Benchmarking OpenStack Performance at Scale
Openstack High Availability @ PayPal
Stack Debate: Understanding OpenStack’s Future <- wish this session was earlier in the summit!
Panel: International Forum: The State of OpenStack Around the World— Nice to see Sajid up on stage.
Some observations
Throughout the summit, I watched for what customers wanted and how developers feel about it. I also tried to probe the CEOs/ CTOs why they are delivering what they are delivering now, and what their plans are. I tried to seek feedback on what is missing, what is needed, what is cool, but not so needed now etc. Out of those 200+ conversations I had in the span of 4 days, here are the three things that stood out most:
Need for Successful Use cases
This was the central theme, much different from previous summit I had attended. Customers seem to have gained confidence on how large OpenStack cloud can be, thanks to a Lot of successful user stories on the infrastructure. However, a large number of customers are still looking for what applications can be run successfully on OpenStack Cloud. Watch out for updates from the OpenStack User Committee, which has agreed to look in to this from 3 kinds of users (System Admin, End User, and Developer User). If you are interested in helping the User committee in this regard, please contact:
Cost is not THE differentiating factor
One of the most important learning for me, that cost is no longer THE differentiating factor for an OpenStack customer. Granted it is still one of the most important entry points for individuals and developers (just like a developer in a big enterprise spinning up AWS), it is not the most important reason why CIOs decide to go for OpenStack. I am trying to crystallize that myself, but at the higher level, open cloud, the innovation (or the scope of innovation) that OpenStack offers, and the community. The next line is going to be controversial: However, I am not sure if the customer really care about open cloud now. Being able to move workloads from one cloud to another is the Holy Grail, but customers are still largely at the first step of getting on to the cloud (or OpenStack cloud specifically).
Success with OpenStack is largely through Managed Services
As much as OpenStack is open source and the documentation is clearer, most of the successful OpenStack clouds have been through managed services. This explains why most of the vendors also offer some kind of professional services around deploying/ managing OpenStack cloud.This also explains the choices for OpenStack training globally.
Rob Hirschfeld takes it one step further by saying ‘Success with OpenStack is largely through DevOps’ which I largely agree.
I will follow up with a post on my thoughts on these observations in more detail. I also have another post coming up on OpenStack in India, based on what I learnt from the Stackers from India. Jetlagged!