A Journey to OpenStack
Lessons Learned from Early Adopters
Agatha Poon
Research Manager, Global Cloud Computing
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Agenda
Why should we care?
Where is the opportunity?
What can OpenStack do?
Key takeaways
3
OpenStack regional snapshot
Fast Growing China and India
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Strong government support for
innovation and balanced growth
A wealth of talent-strong
engineering and technical skills
Chinese providers are eager to
productize OpenStack-based
services and technologies.
OpenStack initiatives in India are
backed by global technology giants
and US-based vendors. Early
adopters – Academia, Government
Well Developed East Asia &
Pacific Countries


Emerging ASEAN and other
South Asian economies

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Growing choice in outsourcing locations, with Malaysia,
Philippines, and Vietnam building credentials
Sri Lanka leads the South Asian region in terms of
human development indicators
In learning phase
Vendor-driven projects and training programs
Early adopters-tech-savvy IT segment


Investment attention focusing
on transformational markets
of Japan, Korea, Australia, and
New Zealand.
Consolidation opportunities
ongoing in IT savvy economies
(Australia, Japan, Korea)
The learning curve remains
steep, but commercial
deployments exist, driven by
local cloud/hosting/managed
service providers
OpenStack is used by academia
for the deployment of
public/private/hybrid clouds
Enterprise cloud journey
83%
Cisco UCS
NetApp FlexPod
VCE Vblock
HP CloudSystem Matrix
IBM PureSystems
Dell Active System
Source: InfoPro cloud computing, Wave 5
Exciting Vendors, Technologies and Initiatives
Growth catalysts
Microsoft
29%
Trustworthy
Visibility
VMware
25%
Security
No vendor lock-in
Amazon.com
24%
OpenStack
“OpenStack is very exciting. We
continue to use VMware for
traditional environment.”
16%
IBM
Large Enterprise, Services:
Business/Accounting/Engineering
8%
EMC
“We use Chef for the orchestration
layer……..and a bunch of other stuff.
OpenStack is being examined to
convert to at some layers.”
5%
0%
5%
10%
Source: InfoPro cloud computing, Wave 5
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
Large Enterprise, Financial Services
On-premise, Private Cloud Platform, Management and
Automation Roadmap
Automated Server Provisioning
47%
Cloud Performance
Management/Monitoring
36%
Cloud Platform/Orchestration Stack
Automated Middleware Provisioning
Automated Network Provisioning
In Use Now
8%
34%
Automated Storage Provisioning
Metering/ Billing Across Internal/
External/ Hybrid Clouds
11%
18%
24%
6%
20%
16%
12%
Short-term Plan
5%
15%
17%
Longer-term Plan
27%
52%
16%
12%
26%
2%
39%
13%
5% 6%
6%
13%
2%
5%
5%
57%
67%
60%
Not in Plan
3%
6%
9%
Don't Know
Source: InfoPro cloud computing, Wave 5
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An evolving landscape of OpenStack vendor ecosystem
OpenStack
Service
Providers
IT Services
& Turnkey
Solutions
DevOps
PaaS on
OpenStack
Opportunities exist to test,
secure, integrate, and orchestrate
disparate cloud assets – for
enterprises and service providers.
OpenStack
Distributors
NSPs/SIs
Hardware/
Software
vendors
OpenStack
with other
clouds
Global OpenStack market sizing ($m)
 OpenStack service providers segment is the
top revenue generator (E2013: $486m)
 Strong uptick in revenue is expected from
OpenStack distributors (8.4% in 2014 from
3.5% in 2012)
 2012-2016 CAGR: 43%
$1,671
$1,237
$895
$622
$399
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
Source: 451 Research Market Monitor, October 2013
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Projected revenue in 2013: By vendor type
OpenStack IT Services &
distributors turnkey solutions
8%
5%
Vendor by category
Vendor count
PaaS on OpenStack
7
OpenStack service providers
14
DevOps
5
OpenStack with other clouds
3
Network service/Equipment
providers
7
OpenStack distributors
4
IT Services & Turnkey
solutions
8
OpenStack Service
Providers 78%
Source: 451 Research Market Monitor, October 2013
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OpenStack-based private cloud, bespoke
deployment and consulting
 It took over a year to productize OpenStack-
based offerings
 It’s an ongoing efforts due to a very long
development cycle
Implementation challenges
 Overcoming product immaturity and lack of
real testing performed on the code base
 Making sure patches run against production
sites and not devstack is paramount
Key lessons learned
“You are insane to blindly follow release”
Tristan Goode, CEO at Aptira
Customers/ Use cases
 10 deployments (6 of them are based on
existing offerings, 4 deployments are based
on a mix of in-house expertise and thirdparty OpenStack products
 Dev/ test
 PoC for scalability and federation
 Collaborative research
 Data analytics
Aptira has been self-funded, but is looking to raise external funding to grow and own
the OpenStack service provider space in India and across Asia-Pacific.
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OpenStack-compatible product
 FusionSphere R3C10, the virtualization platform
within Fusion Cloud
 Next release-FusionSphere R5-will be based on
all OpenStack components: compute, network,
storage, and management services
 >1,000 engineers are involved in Fusion
Cloud project
Implementation challenges
 Not enterprise-ready yet
 Incorporating all existing enterprise-level
features into OpenStack, along with enhancing
the compatibility of underneath virtualization
platform
Key lessons learned
 The ability to understand the disadvantages/
weaknesses of OpenStack is instrumental in
driving successful deployments
 Addressing issues related to software upgrade
and business migration
Customers
 Gaining traction in the telecom and
entertainment sectors, working with the top
three Chinese telecom carriers
 More than a dozen POCs around the globe
Huawei will first bring OpenStack to enterprises and telecom customers.
The ultimate goal is to become the Openstack enterprise solution provider.
NTT Communications
Product verification based on OpenStackcomponents
• ~80 engineers and 450 patches
• Use cases - office migration and flexible virtual
office environment
• Targeting Arcstar Universal One (VPN) users, the
company has recently released a cloud service based
on OpenStack.
Key lessons learned
•Community-based OpenStack lacks error processing
function, which is indispensable for service providers
•Community-based development effort is crucial to
minimize development costs
Customers
• It was released less than a week.
Implementation challenges
• Error handling and transaction processing
• Multi-plugin for Neutron to address issues
associated with concurrent use of multiple
modules
• Constant bug-fixing during internal testing
NTT Communications will focus on enhancing service functions
to support intranet users within and between business organizations.
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eNoCloud
•The continuous delivery of new features could be
challenging- it took approximately three months to
setup eNocloud, but one year to reorganize
engineering around the notion of continuous
delivery
•Entire development team (~25) involved in various
OpenStack projects
•One of the top ten contributors to OpenStack for
the past three releases
Implementation challenges
•OpenStack feature gaps still exist
•Managing growth while maintaining core values,
and being able to evolve at its own pace
Key lessons learned
 Stay agile
 Think out of the box - enforce its belief in open
source without becoming just another service
company
Customers
• Some 200 clients ( consulting, managed services,
and hosting)
• Safran/Morpho-OpenStack private cloud
• Cloudwatt-Openstack public cloud
• Consider eNoCloud as the demonstrator of its
technology know-how, and a way to validate its
development
eNovance are currently expanding its operations worldwide, replicating
business processes in many different geographies. Primary focus for 2014
is to grow its existing customer base outside of Europe.
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The missing links: Who should take the lead?
Industry
consortia?
The
Foundation?
Large
Enterprises?
Individual
community
users?
Leading
vendors/service
providers?
Missing links
OpenStack Talent
Limited functionality
Fragmentation within the OpenStack community
Proven productions are scarce
Accelerating the commercial use of OpenStack using a well-defined,
secure framework and standardized management processes.
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Key takeaways
 Enterprise interest and demand have emerged as a
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main drivers for new projects.
The crossover and convergence of enterprises and
service providers offers vendors an opportunity to
serve both markets.
There are a handful of commercial deployments in
Asia-Pacific, and the market for OpenStack is still
defining itself.
Global revenues for OpenStack-based offerings are
relatively small today, but we expect them to grow
rapidly.
Demand for OpenStack expertise and experience
presents itself as a major challenge.
Publications
 Long-form report: The OpenStack Tipping Point, April 2013
 Market Insight report: OpenStack-related business revenue to exceed $1bn
by 2015 as commercial models evolve, October 22, 2013
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Questions? Comments?
agatha.poon@451research.com