“We’re moving to a cloud world where you’re provisioning what used to be done in hardware is now done in software.” It’s clear to see where Rackspace and its CTO, John Engages see the world of the web going. As one of the founders of OpenStack, Rackspace has continued to put time, effort and code into open source and the software-defined world that we are moving towards. At the OpenStack Summit this week, Engages stopped by to chat briefly with theCUBE hosts John Furrier and Jeff Frick about #OpenStack.

The modern era of computing is scale out open source. Organizations are having to retool, while also experiencing a culture change into a more DevOps environment. Engages explained how Rackspace not only went through both, but how they see themselves becoming a very large version of their customers at the start-up level. Using OpenStack to retool and drive innovation has proven to be monumental in Rackspace’s business. As we covered yesterday, the developer is becoming more important and having more control now — and that’s something Rackspace has noticed. “Using OpenStack has allowed us to attract more developers to our community.”

But what are the main thresholds to the cloud?

1. Interoperability amongst open source clouds
2. Making sure we’re all staying true to OpenStack (service providers and distributors)
3. Maturity of OpenStack (some things still aren’t available)

Engates believes that Rackspace has hit its stride in its public cloud, already on Grizzly, with a whole pipeline of features on the horizon. Yesterday Rackspace announced its  Rackspace Global Cloud Network, a new program that arms service providers and telcos with an interoperable and linked OpenStack-based public cloud environment. Time and time again Rackspace is taking meticulous steps to further entrench itself in the open source game.

The next windfall in open source that all of our guests, including Engates, have alluded to is enterprise solutions. The enterprise community is thirsty for the cloud and that ball will soon drop. The opportunity to innovate in open source with OpenStack is one that the legacy solutions in enterprise will soon be eaten. Mobile devices, Big Data, your and my Internet of Things … access to all of these through infrastructure that can scale quickly at low cost is a common theme we’re hearing at the OpenStack Summit 2013.

Where does Engates see OpenStack and open source a year from now? “The platform is going to power the future of IT.” Check….your move web.