Will OpenStack Change the Face of Cloud Computing?

For those of you who are not familiar with OpenStack, it is a cloud operating system that controls large pools of compute, storage, and networking resources throughout a data center, all managed through a dashboard that gives administrators control while empowering their users to provision resources through a web interface. The OpenStack project got a boost today when Red Hat released a preview version of its own version of the open source cloud software.

The preview version will be distributed to the forum which includes hackers to help identify security holes within the software. While it is not designed for Production use, I do believe that we will see multiple organizations jump on this new model. RackSpace, a major competitor of the Amazon Cloud Service, is already running a production version which is basically the cloud computing version of Linux. The software allows customers to set up their own OpenStack instance to run in their data centers or they can run it on RackSpace’s cloud or utilize other companies such as HP.

The ability to segment and setup an organizational private cloud will become very appealing to the Enterprise who is concerned about co-mingled data or access by cloud employees. The ability to encrypt data that runs on the cloud and access it in a private environment has tremendous value to the security team that has to manage the flow of data leaving the organization. I feel this will become the new cloud model in the next several years. As of right now it will not help consumers, which are a major revenue source for cloud providers, but it will begin to protect data within organizations, especially that data which is sensitive to many consumers.

The history of the OpenStack started at the Rainbow Mansion, and for anyone who is unfamiliar with this house should check out “The Secret History of OpenStack, the Free Cloud Software That’s Changing Everything”. It is a very interesting story that outlines the concepts of today’s greatest minds. The reality is that the cloud is an ever changing term, when I first started in the business, we were outsourcing the business process, then the term "Hosted" became the buzz word, then it evolved into a "Managed Service" and then the think tanks got clever and called it a "Cloud".

Now we will have public and private clouds as the technology becomes available. Expect to hear more about the private cloud that sits on the public domain, I predict it will become the future for the vast majority of enterprises. I would envision sections of applications (like salesforce.com) to become available via the private cloud. The challenge of course will be how to manage the co-mingled data that is contained in the database. But that is just a technical challenge and one that I do not think will take too long to figure out.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.