Based on the level of excitement over OpenStack at this week’s OpenStack Summit in Vancouver, you might come to the conclusion that this open source enterprise cloud platform has established itself as the central technology of the new cloud-centric world of enterprise IT.
Attracting less attention, however, are OpenStack’s shortcomings. Enterprise deployments are few and far between, and shining examples like Walmart required extensive customization. OpenStack continues to be dogged by the reputation for being difficult to install and even more challenging to get to work properly.
And then there’s the story that VCs have been bailing on OpenStack investments, not to mention the spectacular flameout of OpenStack darling Nebula earlier this year – what fellow Forbes contributor Ben Kepes describes as “carnage.”
True, OpenStack is one of the largest open source projects ever – if not the largest overall, which is quite an achievement for the somewhat rarefied enterprise software space. However, in the open source world, bigger is not necessarily better.
Many of the best open source products on the market resulted from the efforts of small, dedicated teams. In contrast, the OpenStack community seems to be a bandwagon that every enterprise software vendor, large and small, can’t resist jumping on. Or perhaps the proper metaphor is chefs, as in too many.
For any effort this large, the only way for a community to organize itself is to divide and conquer – and as a result, OpenStack has numerous disparate projects in the works. However, instead of sharing a unified, consistent architecture (as you would aspire to achieve with a small, crack team), the OpenStack masses have assembled a hodgepodge of miscellaneous projects, ranging from admittedly high quality in some cases to struggling works in progress in others.
And yet, the OpenStack community zooms along, driving release after release, eschewing seamless backward compatibility in exchange for frenetic progress. The resulting codebase continues to expand with no end in sight, and along with it the hopes and expectations of thousands of developers and other enterprise technology professionals – not to mention the dozens of vendors who are footing the bills.
Read the entire article at http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2015/05/20/openstack-this-decades-mother-of-all-learning-opportunities/.
Intellyx advises companies on their digital transformation initiatives and helps vendors communicate their agility stories. As of the time of writing, none of the organizations mentioned in this article are Intellyx customers. Jason Bloomberg chose not to attend this week’s OpenStack Summit, as he is speaking at the ITARC IASA World Summit in Stockholm. Image credit: Shari Mahrdt.
