At the recent OpenStack Summit 2015, Ken Ross, director of Project Management at Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., sat down with Stu Miniman of theCUBE to talk about how OpenStack fits into Brocade’s business.

“A lot of people think of Brocade as a fiber channel business,” Ross said, giving an overview of his company. He explained that the company is also working the software side of things with a focus on plug-in products with a software networking function. It is using OpenStack to help create those plug-ins for its product lines.

Customers and the community

The discussion turned to how customers related to OpenStack. In the beginning, Ross said, the company had to educate the customers about OpenStack. However, some recent customers started off with OpenStack right out of the gate. Customers have also shown an interest in using OpenStack in the Cloud space.

This growing interest shows that OpenStack is approaching a critical mass within the community. At the convention, OpenStack could be seen forming partnerships with other companies. Adoption of Cloud-based offerings was also on the rise, with hybrid Cloud tech getting a lot of attention.

What OpenStack means to Brocade

Ross mentioned what Brocade was doing with OpenStack. The idea was to take OpenStack technology to the next level in terms of scale, with extensions across Brocade’s datacenters. He was expecting proof of concept results on this work within the next six months.

He related that OpenStack represents a strong opportunity in the networking space. Networking, in his words, has been “stuck in the dark ages.” OpenStack could help change that by bringing DevOps tech into networking. The goal is to take OpenStack processes into the networking space.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of OpenStack Summit Vancouver 2015.