“Austin,” the updated OpenStack Object Storage code is now available. OpenStack, first announced in July 19, 2010, is the open-source cloud management software developed by the hosting provider, Rackspace. It includes the code supporting Cloud files and Cloud Servers technology, merged with the software developed by NASA for its Nebula cloud platform.

Austin’s release is expected to be one of the steps in opening the cloud infrastructure as it implies a possibility of democratizing IT while providing a data storage that is readily available making it easier to understand the IT culture.

Jim Curry, Chief Stacker and General Manager of OpenStack, said “The support and active participation from the community has been amazing to see.  We are much further along than we expected to be three months into this project, and the future is very promising.” He further added that “The community is rallying around the vision of an open source cloud alternative, which means service providers won’t have to reinvent the wheel with proprietary cloud stacks, and cloud consumers will have the freedom to move their applications among clouds, whether an enterprise private cloud or simply to change service providers.”

The release of Austin paves the way for OpenStack Compute to be ready for prototyping and testing. With this, users are enjoined to install and provide feedback in active participation in the open development process. It is projected to be easily adopted by the stakeholders who have been actively evaluating the project namely: service providers building cloud offerings, enterprises and government agencies deploying private clouds, and the ecosystem of cloud technology providers integrating with OpenStack.

“Citrix will deliver OpenStack technology as an integral part of the Citrix OpenCloud platform,” said Peter Levine, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Datacenter and Cloud Division at Citrix.  “The industry has spoken, and customers are demanding open, cross-platform virtualization solutions.  We’re already seeing positive results from our early participation in the developer community, and we see momentum building to make OpenStack the open source standard for both enterprise and public cloud deployments.”

All OpenStack codes are readily available under the Apache 2.0 license. Institutions and services providers needing to use their hardware for large-scale cloud deployment are expected to positively embrace this development.

Microsoft had been said to create a way to make users deploy OpenStack on top of Windows server running Hyper-V virtualized environment. Although no confirmation has been published on this matter from Rackspace, Microsoft’s move is indeed logical.

Public cloud offerings are getting a good amount of attention, with new resources being added all the time.  OpenStack recently launched an iPad app for mobile monitoring, and a number of supporters came out to Hadoop World this year, which we covered extensively on this blog and at SiliconANGLE.TV (see here for our one-on-one interviews).

Further details on the ongoing and other projects can be found on www.openstack.org