VMTurbo recently announced that it has joined the OpenStack community and plans to integrate its intelligent workload management solutions with the open source cloud platform. By becoming a member of OpenStack, VMTurbo joins approximately 180 other companies that have collaborated to produce an open source cloud computing platform and cloud standards for the industry.

VMTurbo brings with it an automated and intelligent control plane for cloud computing and virtualization. Data centers can deploy the VMTurbo Operations Manager for infrastructure management and control. Features include the Economic Scheduling Engine that allocates resources based on business goals, as well as operations management, data center control, performance assurance, and capacity management.

Created by Rackspace Hosting and NASA, OpenStack enjoys the support and contributions of numerous major IT companies, including HP, Cisco, Dell, Microsoft, AT&T, Yahoo, and Red Hat. The code for OpenStack is publicly and freely available under an Apache 2.0 license. VMTurbo hopes to further the OpenStack initiative by providing freedom and flexibility and eliminating vendor lock-in.

The concept behind an open source and standards-based cloud has gained steam in recent years, as many companies view it as a good business decision, beyond simply an ethical or philosophical choice to support open source. The movement has also been fueled by customer reluctance to adopt cloud computing for fear of not only being locked into a single vendor’s software but also being literally forced to continue using its cloud service indefinitely. With an open cloud system, customers could conceivably move from one provider to another.

For companies like VMTurbo, projects like OpenStack also provide opportunities for partnerships, software bundling, and client sharing. Theoretically, customers who purchase one OpenStack-integrated solution will be inclined to purchase others.