The young-but-growing OpenStack ecosystem consists in part of vendors who seem content to work together forever as one big happy, code-sharing family. But the reality is, they’re all lined up at the proverbial starting line, secretly jockeying for position in a race they hope will ultimately prove lucrative. Which vendor will emerge the leader? More importantly, does OpenStack, a series of community-based, open-source projects, even need a leader?

Every six months, developers, users and administrators of OpenStack cloud software convene at a five-day conference called the OpenStack Summit. The most recent, OpenStack Summit 2014, took place at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta. One thing this Summit revealed is that the OpenStack ecosystem, while growing, is nowhere near mature enough to name a leader. Cisco, Dell, Docker, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Mirantis, Piston Cloud, Rackspace, Red Hat, SolidFire, Ubuntu and VMware are all contributing to OpenStack in one way or another, each having a chance at leadership someday.

“There’s dozens of distribution out there, and my question is, are we going to get some leadership?” wondered Wikibon analyst Stu Miniman to co-host John Furrier in theCUBE’s introductory conversation at the OpenStack Summit. “Rackspace…helped create OpenStack…[but] if you were to ask who are the top two or three companies in OpenStack,” Miniman said, “I don’t know that I would start with Rackspace.”

According to Furrier, even in this early stage of the business, Red Hat might have an advantage, depending on, he said, how well they strategize and create partnerships. “It’s too early to tell,” said Furrier in an OpenStack Summit interview with Alessandro Perilli, General Manager of the Open Hybrid Cloud Program Office at Red Hat (and a former Gartner analyst). “I always use the NASCAR example [of] ‘the race hasn’t started’. But… [Red Hat has] pole position [in light of their] breadth and experience in Linux and the penetration numbers of Linux in the enterprise. [Red Hat is] in a good spot.”

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OpenStack ecosystem needs diversity

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Though Red Hat is seen by Furrier as the likely OpenStack leader, it’s still early for predictions since the OpenStack market is still very much in its infancy.

“There is a lot of opportunity for all vendors to establish themselves in terms of market share, in terms of business opportunities,” Perilli told Furrier. “So, it may take some time. It’s not a market that is ready to be won today. This is a market that is evolving over the next… three to five years.”

Mark Shuttleworth, one of the OpenStack Summit’s keynote speakers and founder of open-source software provider Canonical, also acknowledges that OpenStack’s ecosystem is immature. Shuttleworth is also the founder of Ubuntu, a free, OpenStack-based operating system for desktops and servers. Miniman had asked him at the Summit if OpenStack can move forward without any clear leaders.

“Nobody cares about an open-source project until it is, in fact, well-grounded,” Shuttleworth replied. “And then that project establishes ground rules, as well as its core leaders, during that time of formation.”

Furrier asked Shuttleworth about OpenStack competition. Should it be a land grab at this point, he wondered, or should everyone just be fine with being a part of OpenStack?

“A healthy ecosystem requires a diverse perspective,” Shuttleworth replied. He added that he believes that there’s still a lot of room for innovation, creativity and diversity. Shuttleworth’s response seems to indicate that any one vendor trying to lead the OpenStack ecosystem could prove detrimental to its growth.

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Watch John Furrier and Stu Miniman interview Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu at OpenStack Summit Atlanta 2014:

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‘Coop-etition’ in the OpenStack ecosystem

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Even though OpenStack is based on non-proprietary, open-source software, most of the vendors involved are still trying to lock in their customer base to some degree. Some vendors are doing this by building and selling services on top of it since, eventually, they will need to try to make money from OpenStack. And it is not just one vendor who is currently trying to lock in their customer base; this fact sometimes gets lost in image-focused squabbles between vendors.

As an example, consider the recent Wall Street Journal article which revealed Red Hat’s business plans and HP’s response to those plans. In “its quest to sell OpenStack, Red Hat has chosen not to provide support to its commercial Linux customers if they use rival versions of OpenStack,” reported Spencer E. Ante in his article, Red Hat Plays Hardball on OpenStack Software. This was the conclusion Ante reached after reviewing a leaked, confidential Red Hat internal memo.

“Do not work with Mirantis,” the memo instructed Red Hat employees, referring to the OpenStack-focused software provider. “We should not engage them jointly with any customers or leverage their services for delivery of our products.”

In his story, Ante quotes Martin Fink, an HP cloud executive, as saying, “Red Hat has taken the art form of closed open-source to a new level.” His criticism implies that, in its quest for market leadership, Red Hat won’t support any customers who choose to use Mirantis’ and other vendors’ OpenStack distributions. Since interoperability and support for different platforms is key to customers, creating silos between vendor offerings wouldn’t be a responsible thing for Red Hat to do.

According to Red Hat, it’s not what they plan to do. “For us, support and certification is not a marketing announcement, it’s a technical activity where we work with other partners to technically certify,” said Joe Fitzgerald, General Manager of Cloud Management at Red Hat, to Furrier in Red Hat’s first on-the-record response to the Wall Street Journal article.

“I think Red Hat is very responsible about what we do in terms of support,” Fitzgerald continued. “I think there’s two issues here. One is, if you look at our openness, not just our open-source aspect but our interoperability, we support running RHEL [Red Hat Enterprise Linux] on VMware and Microsoft, for example. In cloud forms, we support Microsoft, OpenStack, Amazon, VMware—all different cloud providers and technologies. So Red Hat has a history of being open.”

Fitzgerald also pointed out that Red Hat doesn’t take certifications casually. “We’re not going to casually take on supporting any different combinations of things,” he said. “It would be irresponsible unless we have a technical relationship and we can be sure that things are going to work.”

Lauren E. Nelson, private IaaS cloud lead analyst at Forrester Research

HP’s accusation of Red Hat not playing fair in the open-source world (by trying to lock in its customers) isn’t fair in itself. In fact, it really could be considered an example of the pot calling the kettle black. After all, “they’re all trying to do vendor lock-in” confirmed Lauren E. Nelson, private infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud lead analyst at Forrester Research, in an interview with SiliconANGLE.

 Nelson points out that, while all the vendors are contributing, which helps the OpenStack project move forward, they all have their own best interests at heart as well. “Basically, in the ecosystem right now, all of the vendors are…trying to compete in a kind of ‘coop-etition’ where they’re both competitors and also working toward this common goal of…OpenStack.”

So, as mentioned earlier, even though OpenStack is based on non-proprietary, open-source software, most of the vendors involved are still trying to lock in their customer base. But interoperability between and support for other OpenStack distributions will be key to any of the vendors’ success in the market. No OpenStack leader, if one ever does emerge, will become the top vendor if they do not provide customers with this interoperability and support.

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Watch John Furrier and Stu Miniman interview Joe Fitzgerald of Red Hat at Openstack Summit Atlanta 2014:

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Rule-bound bureaucracies drive away developers

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Vendors, including the aforementioned ones (Cisco, Dell, Docker, HP, IBM, Intel, Mirantis, Piston Cloud, Rackspace, Red Hat, SolidFire, Ubuntu and VMware), are all helping OpenStack to move forward. But does all this competition between OpenStack vendors fly in the face of what an open-source community like OpenStack is all about? This race for leadership between commercial vendors could serve to disillusion the developers who make OpenStack’s potential so great.

“While much of the tech vendor community developed under strong leaders (Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs), that model does not hold for community-driven projects requiring consensus and volunteer labor” such as OpenStack, eWEEK’s Eric Lundquist recently wrote in his article, OpenStack Sure to Maintain Rapid Pace of Upgrades, App Development.

For the industry to bring in an OpenStack leader with dictatorial rather than coding skills is a big mistake, according to Lundquist. “The raucous, democratic open nature of the OpenStack process has proved successful through nine versions,” he wrote, “and developing a rule-bound bureaucracy would drive away developers and run counter to the developer’s philosophy of rapid application production updated at a rapid pace.”

An open-source, community-driven project such as OpenStack will certainly need innovation, creativity and diversity to keep it strong and growing. But will any one vendor emerge as its leader trying to control that creativity? Let’s hope not.

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OpenStack logo courtesy of OpenStack Summit 2014

Video interview clips courtesy of theCUBE

Red Hat photo credit: Wander Boessenkool via photopin cc 

Photo of Lauren E. Nelson courtesy of Forrester Research