OpenStack’s Inflection Point: What to Look for in 2015

Table of Contents

  1. Summary
  2. Signs of Real Adoption
  3. OpenStack Startups, the Next Wave of Innovation
  4. Trends and Priorities
  5. Summary
  6. About Sriram Subramanian

1. Summary

OpenStack emerged as a top open-source Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform in 2014, gaining worldwide adoption in many different industries. The list of vendors that lined up behind OpenStack in 2014 even includes some of the technology’s competitors, such as VMware. OpenStack vendors, meanwhile, started to see actual revenues, and many multimillion-dollar deals were publicized, as was the $3 billion estimated revenue expected by 2018.

Last year also saw market consolidation with the acquisition of many OpenStack startups. What used to be a community dominated by startups is now run by bigger vendors with a longer history of catering to enterprise customers.

As we move further into 2015, key developments to watch include:

  • Dominance among the larger vendors has improved confidence among larger enterprise customers. Thanks to this push, the OpenStack community looked into enterprise workloads and needs, too.
  • OpenStack has shifted from being a largely developer-driven project to one that is more customer-friendly.
  • The need for a central product management is now increasingly recognized, particularly after last year’s explosion of peripheral projects and services. More work must be done in this regard, but the community is moving in right direction through operator- and enterprise-centric work groups.
  • Participating vendors started using code contribution metrics in 2014 to demonstrate their commitment to OpenStack and their dominance in the community—so much that it became confusing to see which metrics were really relevant, something to be examined further in the near future.
  • Despite its pain points and deficiencies, OpenStack has the level of product maturity and features that makes it a serious option for enterprise adoption. Organizations now have more help than ever before to adopt OpenStack. We expect the adoption to grow globally along with more moving in to production.

In 2015, OpenStack stands at an inflection point. It’s evolution will continue as the larger vendors continue building out their offerings geared at their customers’ requirements.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Rasica/iStock.

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