Transparency, or the lack thereof, is a big issue with almost every new technology.  In the early days of cloud computing, many vendors stuck a “cloud” label on their existing services in hopes of exploiting user confusion to drive brand awareness, and a similar phenomenon is occurring today among some traditional data management providers that are struggling to keep up with their nimbler startup rivals.

Even though it had been hailed more than once as a poster child for community-led innovation, the OpenStack movement has too fallen victim to  its own hype, with expectations being set far too high for the average enterprise CIO to reach. That, however, is about to change. The OpenStack Foundation wants to bridge the gap between marketing and reality with a new marketplace aimed at establishing a standard of transparency across the dizzying array of products and services available for the open source cloud platform and bring the sprawling ecosystem back under control.

The aptly-named OpenStack Marketplace is rolling out this morning with five initial categories: public cloud services, distributions and appliances, consulting and system integration and drivers. At launch, the catalog features offerings from several dozen firms, including emerging players such as Nebula and Mirantis as well as incumbent vendors like HP, IBM and Red Hat. Several names, mostly from the latter group, appear under multiple headings in an indication that the competitive swimming lanes are already beginning to form. The OpenStack Foundation is merely trying to accelerate the process.

The official mission statement for the marketplace is to provide “objective product information” users can depend on for making informed decisions about which technology or service to adopt. Beyond that, vendors have to meet a strict set of requirements in order to eligible to list their products on the store.

For starters, solutions that include components of OpenStack must be running the latest release of the platform and fully expose the native APIs, which simplifies life for customers and transfers the burden of version management to vendors. It has the added benefit of guaranteeing a base level of compatibility  that did not exist before, a crucial first step towards cloud interoperability. Farther down the line, products will have to pass a mandatory testing program before appearing on the marketplace.

Covering all bases, the store also incorporates data from the community-maintained DriverLog project to make it easier for admins  to check if their existing infrastructure is compatible with specific components. Additionally, users have the ability to rate and review listings. The goal, according to OpenStack Foundation COO Mark Collier, is to deliver a simplified and consistent experience that lowers barriers to entry for traditional enterprises, the exact same thing IBM is going for with its recently unveiled cloud marketplace.