Open Stack Silicon Valley 2015 began its conference today with an impressive lineup of speakers to discuss the future of Cloud computing. Opening the show was Jonathan Bryce, executive director of the OpenStack Foundation, to discuss the state of OpenStack. He welcomed the global community to Silicon Valley, stating that everyone in the room was part of something bigger.

Recognizing a community contribution

Bryce announced that OpenStack had just received recognition as a tax-exempt, non-profit status from the Internal Revenue Service. He stated that it is recognition of the organization’s contribution and that this new status will enable OpenStack to invest more resources in the community.  He then went on to identify the four common patterns taking shape in the industry.

Pattern #1: Starts with a specific focus
Adoption begins with an internal need within the enterprise, and these users become the internal promoters to create demand for the enterprise.

Pattern #2 – Look for experience operating horizontal scale services
Internal promoters become the service providers and experts in the ecosystem.

Pattern #3 – Define “Cloud-Preferred” Policies
Organizational policies need to be successful and strategic. Team with the developers to get the most out of the Cloud experience.

Pattern #4 – Do Cloud for a Good Reason
Do things for the right reasons, not just to build it. Have a Cloud strategy and make it clear to all teams and the organization.

Bryce brought out Amit Tank, principal architect, DirecTV, to talk about the obstacles the company faces and how they use OpenStack to manage traffic load and load spikes that the company experiences. Tank provided details of how the company was able to integrate its existing infrastructure with OpenStack, and he said that this solved many of his organizational problems.

Bryce also announced that OpenStack recently posted appDev on its website, which provides tools to help developers “accelerate software development testing and QA.”

Google it: Kubernetes

Next on deck was Craig McLuckie, senior product manager for Google. McLuckie addressed the value of OpenStack and said that it is solving issues for enterprise customers. McLuckie explored the notion of how to bring all the technology worlds together. He dissected the benefits and pitfalls of PaaS, Iaas and containers transitioning into Google’s latest product, Kubernetes, an open-source system to manage containerized applications across more than one host.

Stating, “Kubernetes extracts the best of PaaS orchestration and management,” McLuckie launched into the Kubernetes experience explaining how its latest product offers dynamic control systems that create wholly new capabilities by comparing a remote control plane to a drone.

The objective of the Google and OpenStack project is to create a path to Cloud native, and McLuckie feels that accomplishing this will happen by working together as a community to bring all the pieces together.

Microsoft expands the IT department

James Staten, chief strategist of Cloud+Enterprise for Microsoft, was the next speaker, and he had an interesting view on the new face of the IT department. He said the biggest challenge facing IT departments is that they are not ready to employ the functionality a company needs. “The focus needs to be on organizational psychology and then technology,” he stated.

Staten asks the IT department to “rethink it’s role.” He explained that IT has to change the mindset of “we make technology” to “we help our company use technology,” saying IT needs to stand for innovation and transformation.

And by changing the focus, Staten said that IT leaders need to show their teams a new career path. As the industry evolves, old job descriptions are changing. He believes that when changing the job descriptions to match the organizational needs, people’s skills can be utilized in other places. They simply need to know the options available.

According to Staten, the IT department needs to go from “no” to “know how.”

Racking up the customers

Adrian Otto, distinguished architect at Rackspace, Inc., talked about the multi-billion-dollar market, in which his company owns about 68 percent of the space. He also discussed how the future is all about making infrastructure better for enterprise customers.

He addressed the need for development in Open Service Interface Definitions and developer training. He said that it is time to invest in OS clusters and in making OpenStack scalable, manageable and reliable. Otto said, “This is all about upstream,” referring to bringing solutions to the business user.

The theme of OpenStack Silicon Valley 2015 is about bringing the community together to make what was once impossible, possible through collaboration.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the OpenStack Silicon Valley 2015.

Photo by SiliconANGLE