OpenStack marks its fifth anniversary this month with its global community of 30,000 supporters celebrating at events around the world.

Launched in 2010 as a joint project between Rackspace and NASA, OpenStack started as two open source projects to orchestrate virtual machines and object storage. It has evolved into dozens of projects tackling a broad range of use cases, from accelerating software development to reducing the cost of big data analytics to helping large telco providers roll out Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and next generation network services.

“Five years ago, the idea that massively scalable cloud infrastructure should be open and driven by a community of developers and users was a vision hindered by the reality of the engineering hurdles in the way. Today, hundreds of companies rely on OpenStack to deliver a stable core of cloud services to their app developers, surrounded by a vibrant ecosystem for technology innovation. The OpenStack community is powering the software-defined economy,” said Jonathan Bryce, chief executive officer, OpenStack Foundation.

The community of OpenStack supporters has grown to include more than 500 organizations and 30,000 individual members across 166 countries. There have been 4,000 contributors to date producing nearly 4 million lines of code. OpenStack powers clouds for many of the world’s largest brands; those who have spoken at OpenStack events include AT&T, Best Buy, Bloomberg, BMW, CERN, Cisco Webex, Comcast, Disney, eBay, PayPal, TD Bank and Walmart.

Recent Accomplishments

More than 6,000 members of the OpenStack community gathered in May at the semi-annual OpenStack Summit in Vancouver, British Columbia, to acknowledge under the thematic banner “OpenStack Powered Planet” these recent accomplishments:

  • Interoperability testing now available for OpenStack Powered products — Users can now benefit from the ability to plug into a global network of OpenStack Powered cloud service providers. All new products marketed with the OpenStack Powered logo must undergo interoperability testing, and validated products can be found in the OpenStack Marketplace (openstack.org/marketplace).
  • OpenStack Identity Federation Proof of Concept — Thirty-two companies are committed to delivering federated identity (e.g., the ability to enable hybrid and multi-cloud scenarios with a seamless user experience) by the end of 2015.
  • Community App Catalog — A newly launched OpenStack Application Catalog enables community members to share apps and tools designed to integrate with OpenStack clouds.
  • Google recently signed on to sponsor the OpenStack Foundation, supporting the work around OpenStack’s new Magnum, which enables containers to be used as a first-class resource in OpenStack.

Upcoming

The next release of the software, codenamed Liberty, will be available on October 15, 2015.

The next OpenStack Summit will be held in Tokyo, Japan, October 27 - 30. Among the trending topics to be explored:

  • OpenStack Powered Planet – The OpenStack community will continue to showcase how it is delivering on cloud interoperability and federation across vendors and geographies.
  • Applications on OpenStack – Growing the Community App Catalog and new efforts to educate developers and ISVs targeting OpenStack clouds will be a primary focus.
  • Platform for the Next 10 Years – OpenStack gives users the ability to integrate and test new technologies, such as containers, as they emerge without creating additional islands in their datacenters. OpenStack can provide a single interface to manage virtual machines, containers and bare metal resources.
  • Internet of Things, Telco Networks & NFV - The biggest emerging trends in technology require agility and scalability to meet previously unknown levels of data storage and processing. OpenStack provides the fundamental building blocks these applications need to provide new connectivity and functionality to billions of devices all over the globe.

User groups around the world will celebrate the anniversary with local celebrations. In addition, the OpenStack Foundation staff and board will be hosting an evening event in Portland on Wednesday, July 22, during OSCON (Open Source Convention). Attendees are encouraged to RSVP.