The kickoff for day two of live coverage of this week’s #openstacksummit found the co-hosts of SiliconANGLE’s theCUBE, John Furrier and Stu Miniman, discussing insights gained from day one’s coverage, expectations for today’s coverage and the future of the the OpenStack platform. What’s clear is that Miniman and Furrier share distinctly opposing viewpoints on where OpenStack may be in the next 12 to 18 months.

The OpenStack Summit started off as a developer show. The focus has always been on making the platform more stable and easier to consume. That strategy has, according to Miniman, failed to light the fire of interest under OpenStack that it will need if it is going to be able to fully mature over the next several months.

“[At this morning’s keynotes] there was talk about OpenStack over the last nine releases and where it needs to go over the next nine releases,” Miniman noted. “As an analyst, I look at what are appropriate expectations.”

Those expectations, he explains, are not fostered by the strong base of revenue being confined to the startup level.

“Getting $25-30 million in revenue is good for them,” he stated. “Bigger players won’t even look at it under $100 million. That could slow OpenStack down.”

It is for this reason Miniman doesn’t see the revenue ramp in the platform occurring for at least another year, if at all.

Some of the bigger players in the platform are doing exactly the right thing to drive wider adoption, however. Companies like Red Hat are working diligently to make OpenStack more consumable for the enterprise. “It’s part of the DevOps revolution,” Miniman said. “A few vendors have some of the pieces but it’s about making a fully consumable solution.”

Taking a slightly more bullish take on the future of OpenStack, Furrier stated, “It’s more of a running game right now. There are no big passes being thrown.”

He alluded to an interview yesterday with OpenStack Foundation Board Member and HP VP Eileen Evans, mentioning that OpenStack really is still in its early days. “Clearly, the big guys are rallying in a big way,” he continued. “HP is on board. IBM is heavily involved. It’s a ground swell. Not quite the big wave yet, though.”

Participation by the likes of HP and IBM is nothing to ignore either. Miniman explained that their taking down deals of any size allows for the possibility of those new OpenStack customers to move to other providers as there is no lock-in, a signature of those and other big providers service models.

The immediate future for the platform is focusing on building the swim lanes, according to Miniman.

“I think back to AWS and everything was about the future,” he stated. “There is a great vibe at this show, but it seems grounded in reality and fixing what is rather than painting a picture of where they are going.”

Miniman then referenced Furrier’s frequent closing question for guests, inquiring what makes this point in time important, saying, “It is important. But there are several things on the horizon that seem more important than OpenStack.”

Between Furrier’s guarded optimism and Miniman’s healthy skepticism, one thing is clear going forward with the OpenStack platform: boom or bust, this market is going to be interesting to watch over the next year or so.

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