open cloud

I’ve been lucky to have been a part of a really cool project, and I wanted to use the Rackspace blog to get the word out a bit more. For the past few weeks, I’ve hosted a Google Plus hangout that includes me, a few of my Racker friends and some of our customers. It has been a fun, informal way to have a conversation. We’ve answered questions on a number of topics, including Cloud Load Balancers, Active Directory in the cloud, transferring video files to our CDN and many more.

One of the ways we improve our services is by asking for your feedback. We want to offer you the tools you need to do great things in the cloud.

ObjectRocket, the industrial strength MongoDB database-as-a-service company that we acquired in February, is now available in our Chicago data center. This means you can now use ObjectRocket as part of your Rackspace deployments.

If you are just getting started with the cloud, system administration or software development, Rackspace has a number of tools to help you go from a cloud beginner to a cloud expert. In fact, Stackdriver recently gave Rackspace an A+ as one of the best clouds for novices to get started on. We have a lot of resources as you begin your cloud journey.

Last fall Rackspace announced the unlimited availability of Cloud Monitoring, our highly available API-driven monitoring system that is changing how we deliver Fanatical Support. Since then, we have been quietly adding features; and today we’re making those features available through unlimited availability, and we’re unveiling even more.

I have been a long-time attendee of OpenStack Summit (since the days when it was split into a Developer Summit on Monday through Wednesday and a Business Summit and Conference on Thursday and Friday). Now the entire event is called the “OpenStack Summit” and developers, operators and business executives converge in one place to talk all things OpenStack. So far, Every six months the conference has grown – the most recent brought nearly 3,000 attendees together in Portland to talk about the future release of OpenStack, Havana, and to share their experiences with OpenStack to date. With this type of growth, it was only natural for the OpenStack Foundation to ensure there were multiple tracks so attendees can align themselves to the sessions and topics they care about most. Some of the tracks this year included:

At OpenStack Summit Portland, the team that authored OpenStack Operations Guide during a five-day book sprint earlier this year held a panel discussion to answer questions and receive feedback from the community.

When Open Compute Foundation’s COO Cole Crawford gave a presentation at the OpenStack Summit in San Diego six months ago, he asked how many people in the audience had heard of his project. Only three hands went up. Fast forward, six months later, in Portland, he asked the same question and most people raised their hands. Like OpenStack itself, Open Compute is gaining interest.

Where will OpenStack be in 2023? While we’re only three years into the OpenStack revolution, the record crowd at OpenStack Summit Portland cements that the community-driven open source cloud operating system is here to stay.

UPDATED April 18, 2013 Rackspace changed the technology game when we co-founded OpenStack in July 2010. Come “Up Your Game” to the next level with us at OpenStack Summit in Portland, which runs from Monday, April 15 to Thursday, April 18.