OpenStack is starting to show significant progress in customer adoption, paralleling an important shift in the cloud computing market heralded by key developments including such as Hewlett-Packard, Co.’s recent acquisition of Eucalyptus Systems Inc. and the strategic placement of cloud experts at Google, Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., both consumer companies making strides in enterprise cloud services.

“We’re starting to see adoption,” stated Chris Kemp, the founder and chief strategy officer at Nebula, Inc. in a live interview with theCUBE’s John Furrier and Jeff Frick, live from OpenStack Silicon Valley 2014. Kemp discussed recent deployments of Nebula services with a growing number of high profile customers. Such traction is boosting the OpenStack ecosystem, as the open source cloud platform is distributed through the likes of HP.

“OpenStack is just fine,” said Kemp. “What we have at OpenStack is a bunch of different projects that together form a platform. If you want to build a product, it’s a great place to start.” The power of OpenStack is not a product, it’s in the platform, Kemp furthered, which connects all these different projects. The main focus at Nebula has been on increasing the consistencies of these implementations.

Guiding OpenStack implementation

Commenting on the fact companies do not want a do-it-yourself approach to OpenStack, Kemp anticipates more choices for enterprise customers, going for a turnkey product like Nebula, a combination of hardware and software services through HP, or the DIY approach.

“We’ve seen a lot of focus now in the different products and services being offered,” Kemp shared. If a company wants to bring on OpenStack, there’s a clear call to action from players in the market, he furthered, suggesting that a curious customer “just get started.”

But jumping in doesn’t guarantee smooth sailing for companies looking to deploy OpenStack in their data center. Kemp and his teams at Nebula look to address the obstacles clients face when implementing OpenStack.

“If I were able to wave my [magic] wand, I would address this cultural issue within the [client] company,” Kemp stated. “We have a lot of systems deployed that can’t be used because of cultural issues. If I were a CIO I would move along — I would stand up a cloud and… try to immediately deal with these issues.” Otherwise, he furthered, the CIO would fall behind and even risk getting fired.

See Kemp’s entire segment below.