The OpenStack open source cloud computing platform has reached the initial “Austin” code release of OpenStack Compute and Object Storage. Since the project's inception three months ago, OpenStack's owners claims to have built an active community of contributors, delivered on its code release and feature commitments, attracted new member organizations, and received significant interest from commercial enterprises and service providers.
OpenStack itself was founded by Rackspace Hosting through its wholly owned subsidiary, OpenStack, LLC, and has the support of more than 35 technology industry leaders.
“We are much further along than we expected to be three months into this project and the future is very promising,” said Jim Curry, Chief Stacker and General Manager of OpenStack. "The community is rallying around the vision of an open source cloud alternative, which would eliminate the need for service providers to reinvent the wheel with proprietary cloud stacks, and allow cloud consumers the freedom to move their applications among the open source clouds, whether it be an enterprise private cloud or simply to change service providers."
Under the “Austin” release sits the code for the OpenStack Object Storage platform, based on source code from Rackspace Cloud Files — this was initially made available as a developer preview in July. The new release is apparently now easier to install and deploy and has dozens of bug fixes and feature additions including a statistics processor, enhanced access control, and user-defined metadata.
Also part of “Austin” comes the initial release of OpenStack Compute, a large-scale provisioning engine ready for testing and prototyping — and users are encouraged to participate in the open development process by installing the code and providing feedback.
OpenStack says the goal with this release is to create an easier path to adoption for the three stakeholder communities: service providers building cloud offerings, enterprises and government agencies deploying private clouds, and the ecosystem of cloud technology providers integrating with OpenStack.
The OpenStack community will determine the roadmap for the next two releases, starting with the "Bexar" release currently scheduled for January, at the next OpenStack Design Conference, slated for November 9-12, in San Antonio, Texas.
