This week’s OpenStack Summit event, brought to you live by SiliconANGLE’s theCUBE, is being held at Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta. In this interview, Aaron Delp and Brian Gracely, Co-Founders of The Cloudcast podcast, sit down with Stu Miniman to lay down their opinions on the current and future state of OpenStack.

Miniman started the interview by asking the guys to offer up their thoughts on the event. Gracely responded saying that, although there were lots of people in attendance and there were a few familiar faces, he wasn’t able to find any customers, bringing up theCUBE’s OpenStack Summit day one wrap-up which noted the event’s mix of good energy without any substance underneath it. On the other hand, Delp was able to find some customers, but said that the level of depth of the customers is still very introductory and that he’s been hearing questions on how to get going as opposed to more in-depth ones.

The State of the Cloud and where OpenStack Fits

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Miniman then asked Delp and Gracely about they saw as the state of the cloud and how OpenStack fits into that discussion. Delp said that industry around OpenStack isn’t moving as fast as everyone wants it to and that a lot of the conversations haven’t really changed since it first came out about four years ago. Gracely replied that there’s a lot of growth in people figuring out the transitions. In terms of the technology, Gracely isn’t very enthused. He said that the only thing he found interesting about OpenStack is its economics, asking questions of if anyone’s going to make any money from it, if it’s going to save customers money and if it’s going to drive any business. Gracely also added that it’s unclear where OpenStack wants to live or what the goal is.

Digging deeper into OpenStack’s ecosystem, Miniman asked the guys if they thought it’s reached a level of maturity to be a true player for supporting platform development. Delp responded by questioning what it takes to get it started and what the overhead is today, noting that it’s still heavy on overhead costs.

Gracely replied with the user perspective. With so many players, he doesn’t know where to begin when it comes to figuring out who to work with seeing as how there isn’t one OpenStack, comparing it to Linux and Fibre Channel. He added that OpenStack can’t grow if the only way to learn it is to read the code, lacking an easy user interface with documentation that requires DevOps skills to understand.

• Making OpenStack consumable

Miniman then went on to discuss the consumability of OpenStack. Referring to a recent tweet by Delp about how most companies lack the capabilities to “build that army of OpenStack ninjas,” he asked about solutions that the enterprise can adopt that don’t require such drastic resources.

Gracely said the number one request from DevOps is if there’s a vendor who will offer a full rack of equipment with a baseload of OpenStack installed. He went on to say that the only people making money in this space are people helping people pay for problem-solving.

Delp chimed in saying that the underlying infrastructure is boring, but it’s complicated. He questioned, “How do you take that plumbing and make it consumable, easy plumbing?”

Gracely then added, “You can spend as many hours as you want getting OpenStack running. You still haven’t made one application even begin to start working.” Moreover, he said that, for those on the federation or on the foundations of OpenStack, the goal should be to be the most invisible and easy-to-install plumbing on the Internet.

• The cost of managing OpenStack builds

In terms of finances, Gracely considers the pure cost of certifying piecemeal releases ridiculously expensive. Comparing the process of large companies acquiring startups where they’re able to provide the resources for the startup to thrive, he believes that there are very few that have the resources to make OpenStack successful and that there’s isn’t enough money to even get it on the radar.

Delp then went on to question what the use cases are that will drive OpenStack to what it’ll be. Answering this, he thinks that it’s still all over the map. “Until somebody says ‘I want that’ and some money starts going around that use case, it’s going to be hard to determine a winner,” said Delp.

Gracely added that it’s very difficult when nobody can classify what you do. Wondering about OpenStack’s market position, he questioned if it’s the new Linux or the new cloud. This also means that the lack of identity results in a lack of direction regarding OpenStack.

The Future of OpenStack

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The conversation then steered towards the future of OpenStack. Considering long-term momentum, a lot players and funding, is OpenStack too big to fail?

Gracely believes there is a future for OpenStack, but isn’t sure how big it will be. Referring to the OpenStack event, Gracely said, “I suspect the show will be 30 or 40 percent larger, and we’ll have half the number of distributions next year.”

Miniman then asked what needs to be done in order for OpenStack to make progress.

Gracely responded that the skills needed now are different, adding, “IT people are notoriously conservative, and they’re not in a rush to change for change sake.”

Delp went on to say the biggest hurdle for OpenStack is talent in DevOps and cloud. “In order to get that experienced person, you’ve got to go develop the battle scars to be able to hire the person with the battle scars,” said Delp. He added that it’s not happening fast enough.

Gracely said that, in order to compete with the guys with a fast learning curve and people are the problem, companies need to figure out how to deal it differently or many will fall.