OpenStack was a hot topic of debate in 2014, but what will the open-source cloud computing software platform bring to 2015?
Will 2015 be the year OpenStack goes mainstream? Will the software reach maturity in 2015? All these questions and more are answered by industry experts, bringing you an insight into what 2015 has in store for OpenStack.
1. OpenStack’s breakthrough year?
Boris Renski, founder of OpenStack vendor Mirantis was keen to highlight that 2015 will be the year OpenStack breaks through into the enterprise: "In 2015, OpenStack will be 5 years old, and will reach maturity in enterprise adoption."
"We’ve already seen large-scale deployments in 2014 (such as Ericsson’s estimated $30M deployment as the foundation for its telecoms network, internal data centers and cloud computing services), and the latest ‘Juno’ release of the platform made it even simpler to deploy, with richer features. 2015 will be OpenStack’s breakthrough year."
Simon Aspinall, president of the service provider business at Virtustream, was quick to disagree arguing that security and compliance issues will hinder OpenStack adoption in the enterprise: "This is not going to be the year that OpenStack breaks into the enterprise."
"It has done well with many trials and POCs but it still falls short on core enterprise functionality such as security and compliance and remains complex to implement. While not well suited for core enterprise workloads, use of OpenStack will grow for develops/SAAS/big-data scale applications"
2. Maturity will be key
John Engates, Chief Technology Officer at Rackspace commented: "In 2015, OpenStack will celebrate its fifth birthday. And that birthday will be boring. That’s a good thing. When a technology matures, it becomes less and less exciting. That’s where we see OpenStack going. Forrester research agrees."
Content from our partners
"In a Quick Take from OpenStack Summit Paris, Forrester wrote: "At its Paris summit, the OpenStack Foundation celebrated the 10th release of the platform (code name: Juno). What stood out about this latest iteration and the progress of its ever-growing ecosystem of vendors, users, and service providers was the lack of excitement that comes with maturity. The Juno release addressed many challenges holding back enterprise adoption to this point and showed signs that 2015 may be the year its use shifts over from mostly test and development to mainstream production deployments."
"We hope that maturity brings with it simplification – if we make OpenStack as easy as possible to use, manage and scale, more and more users will adopt it."
3. Growth in Private Cloud
Sakari Keskitalo Chief Operating Officer at Codership argues that 2015 will be the year OpenStack stands shoulder to shoulder with the likes of VMware in the private cloud, commenting: "The future of OpenStack has been hotly debated over recent weeks, with questions over whether vendor neutrality can be maintained on the platform."
"We will likely see OpenStack, from a business and technical point of view, consolidate its growth next year in private cloud, where the market for service providers has not yet matured. And there is a strong chance VMware is going to have something to say about the battle over private cloud market in 2015."
4. Software Development will drive adoption
Ed Lee, Architect and Kieran Harty, CTO and Co-Founder at Tintri commented: "OpenStack has been a point of discussion since 2010, but in 2015 it’s become very real."
"IBM, HP, Cisco, Red Hat, Oracle and VMware all support OpenStack, prompting many companies to start looking at OpenStack seriously. The momentum will start in Software Development (specifically DevOps) where the flexibility / agility of OpenStack is most compelling. Once value is realized it will naturally spread to other parts of the enterprise."
5. The debate will continue
2015 will not signal the end of the OpenStack debate, with Ian Finlay, Vice President of Abiquo commenting: "The value of OpenStack has been widely debated, and will continue to be in 2015, but the technology is very much still a work-in-progress."
"From a storage perspective, OpenStack provides a useful abstraction layer. Yet, in many ways it is still immature and is considered more of a toolkit than a solution. That said, it will be worth keeping an eye on the technology over the next 12 months, as it may prove to be a valuable solution for specific use cases."
