OpenStack seeks to tackle open source’s integration challenge

OpenStack Foundation unveils four-point plan to address open source integration

Open source has proven it’s not just destined to be a “fast follower” but can also be a source of innovation, according to OpenStack Foundation executive director Jonathan Bryce.

However, the open source community needs to tackle its “integration problem” in order to capture all the value from its innovative projects, Bryce yesterday told the OpenStack Summit in Sydney.

“We’re great at innovating and we’re great at creating new technology for specific uses, Bryce told the summit. “But in reality, users don’t need a virtual machine, they don’t need a container, they don’t need a network – those are the tools that they use to build services that route phone calls, like AT&T, or that move money, like China Union Pay, or that help prevent identity theft, like Commonwealth Bank.

“And overall, what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to make better decisions and help our businesses run better and that’s not about just technology — that’s about putting technology into production in the real world and solving problems and to do that, innovation alone is not enough.”

“Infrastructure is much bigger than just OpenStack – it’s a collection of technologies, and our users are combining those technologies together in many different, interesting ways to meet their use cases,” Open Source Initiative president and OpenStack Foundation board member Allison Randal told the summit.

The OpenStack Foundation has outlined a four-point strategy to tackle the challenge of integration.

“We’re going to start to work on this as a community and as a foundation, to align our activities around these four steps,” Bryce said.

The foundation will seek to document cross-project use cases; boost collaboration between open source communities through efforts such as the OpenDev conference; identify and help address gaps in emerging areas of technology such as edge computing; and help coordinate end-to-end testing through initiatives such as the newly launched OpenLab.

OpenLab is being backed by Huawei, Intel, Open Telekom Cloud and Vexxhost.

“End to end testing is something that we have experimented with in OpenStack but with the launch of OpenLab it’s something that we’re going to start putting more front and centre,” Bryce said.


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Tags cloud computingopen sourceOpenStackOpenStack Foundation

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