In continuing coverage of the #openstacksummit conference being held this week in Atlanta, SiliconANGLE’s theCUBE welcomed Rackspace Evangelista Niki Acosta and Lead Cloud Evangelist Scott Sanchez. Rackspace, the open Cloud and managed solutions purveyor known for their trademarked fanatical support, has been one of the most vocal proponents of OpenStack. Before delving into what the future may hold for the platform, theCUBE host Stu Miniman asked both Sanchez and Acosta to discuss where the platform is today.

Starting off, Sanchez explained how the mission he was tasked with when he joined the company three years earlier was to ‘Make OpenStack Win’. As he explains, “That mission is not yet accomplished. We have opportunities and challenges ahead of us.” However, Sanchez claimed a large portion of his time is dedicated to helping established and hopefully new customers see exactly where the future is leading and what that landscape will ultimately look like.

The Rackspace commitment to open Cloud was definitely bolstered when they released their Cloud code to the open source community, at large. It was this history that led Miniman to inquire where should expect to see the hybrid Cloud just five years from now.

There can only be one

Talk of public, private and hybrid Cloud’s summoned for Sanchez the famous quote from the The Highlander: There can be only one. “When I think of the different names,” he stated, “ that’s how people compare them.” He continued, “ But when you look at how to build a Cloud strategy, you should just have a Cloud strategy.” He sees the segregation of each type as being counter-productive to the entire idea of Cloud technology, namely that you are seeking to achieve greater flexiblity. “OpenStack with its API’s and true granularity helps people to realize that,” he said.

Watch the interview in its entirety here:

In the keynote address this morning, the key value drivers to the new model were explained as having been centered on being good, being fast and being cheap. The most important of the three, Sanchez, claimed, was being fast. “If you give someone enough fast, then you can make up for other things,” he said. Acosta echoed Sanchez, stating that larger organizations, especially with an emerging competitive base that is far more agile, are embracing the evolution of IT.

That being said, Acosta is still surprised when she explains she works in Cloud and people still don’t have a full understanding of what that means. “We live Cloud,” she explained. “We travel and talk about Cloud day in and day out.” That evangelism is bringing more and more converts to the platform. It is Rackspace’s ability to curate that transition that is key to companies only exploring and adopting a Cloud strategy now.

Innovation in DevOps

Innovation, according to Acosta, will come in around DevOps. “There is a culture that comes about working in the Cloud,” she stated. “Not everyone is making that transition but we have customers coming to us that want us to help solve problems and make them more comfortable. We are starting to see more comfort, but I think we aren’t there yet.”

Rounding out the discussion, Miniman asked both Acosta and Sanchez to comment on why it is that they think this year’s Open Stack Summit is important.

It didn’t take long for Acosta to call up a comment she has seen from someone specifically on Twitter. “[This person] called OpenStack a dead duck,” she stated. “But every six months, we keep seeing the numbers grow for organizations that want to adopt OpenStack.”

While Acosta sees strength in a steadily growing user base in the community, Sanchez saw a reason for measured caution. “Defining the core is important,” he said. “The first couple of years was about attracting users to the community. We are well past that now.” He continued, “The challenge now is now that we have momentum behind contributions, are we possibly going too fast? We need to continue to invest as a community in federation. That is necessary.”