OpenStack user survey shows encouraging growth
The growing adoption of OpenStack over the past 12 months was recently summarised in the OpenStack Foundation’s user survey. The findings took deployment data from over 1300 users in 78 countries.
It found that while 56% of deployments are on IT projects, there are a significant amount of deployments in telecoms (16%) and academic/research projects (11%). In IT, infrastructure providers have the most deployments (16%), followed by private cloud providers. The study showed that the typical OpenStack cloud size increased and the main business drivers, no vendor lock-in and the ability to innovate, were ranked more important than costs among its community.
Deployments are growing and 56% of those surveyed were started as recently as 2016/17. But what about the longevity of the platform? “There is no doubt, OpenStack is here to stay.” says Kenneth Tan, co-founder of Sardina Systems, makers of the AI-powered cloud automation platform, FishOS. It promises OpenStack users maximum efficiency and high service availability from their IT environments.
“As OpenStack matures, it’s also changing. In the early days there were a lot more plays focused on professional services for OpenStack. Now we’re seeing a lot more focus on tools, on management systems and automation systems.”
The OpenStack User Survey found that a typical OpenStack user runs between 61-80% of their infrastructure on the platform but despite this, Tan feels many operators aren’t using OpenStack to its full value. “Despite the rapid innovation, operators running OpenStack are still encountering a number of key challenges.” He adds. One of those challenges is the bi-annual upgrade process required by OpenStack. In any business, downtime can be costly and frustrating to customers and staff. “Users are looking at running OpenStack for mission critical production” adds Tan.
Pain-Free Upgrade
Sardina Systems promises to make the upgrade process pain-free by delivering precise execution in just a few hours, without any impact on users or the business. “Users don’t need to know that an upgrade is happening in the background. They just need it to work.” notes Tan.
As well as being a member of the OpenStack Foundation, Sardina Systems is also a member of Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s flagship channel ecosystem, Cloud28+, something the co-founder Kenneth Tan is keen to encourage to other companies. “Cloud28+ has been a fantastic platform to bring together partners to deliver the right solution for customers.” says “with knowledge, we can all get together to build the right solution, to build the right platforms, to meet the customer’s needs.”
We recently caught up with Kenneth Tan to talk about the longevity of the OpenStack platform – listen below
Visit sardinasystems.com for more information
