The benefits of OpenStack, a free and open-source software cloud computing platform, from an end-user perspective are clear. Transitioning to a cloud computing environment promises many benefits, including greater economies of scale and greater flexibility to adopt new application workloads.
With these benefits, however, come new challenges - such as the need to control and re-configure this hyper-dynamic environment as application workloads move in, out, and around the networking infrastructure.
Many organizations are turning to cloud orchestration solutions to overcome these issues. Yet proprietary solutions can lead to vendor lock-in, reducing flexibility and often inhibiting the network’s ability to scale as business needs evolve. In fact, these solutions can limit an organization’s ability to achieve the very benefits the cloud offers. An open solution, such as OpenStack, allows end-users to gain all the benefits of cloud while also guaranteeing the flexibility they need to drive innovation and growth.
From a vendor’s perspective, OpenStack is a key factor in promoting multivendor and system-to-system interoperability for cloud environments. This is essential to creating a healthy, competitive marketplace and so it is important that vendors are fully committed to making OpenStack a key part of their cloud architecture strategies.