OpenStack Summit 2016 kicks off this morning on theCUBE for a three-day run that will provide a window into the state, progress, and future of one of the seminal technologies driving the digital business revolution. In those three days, Wikibon Analysts Stuart Miniman (@stu) and Brian Gracely (@bjgracely) will interview central figures both in the technical development and business application of this fast-maturing, Apache open source cloud platform.

Why is this important to business? The consensus at Wikibon and other industry watchers is that hybrid is the future of cloud architecture in enterprises, and that architecture will incorporate services from multiple public and private cloud providers. These will include multiple infrastructure-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service and software-as-a-service systems, all connected to the private corporate cloud, which in many cases will run on-premise. But a meaningful hybrid cloud should do more than just connect public clouds; it should provide a common architecture so applications can function and data integrate across the private/public boundary. Ideally, users shouldn’t know or care where the application is running.

To do that, the private cloud has to integrate with the public cloud services at least at the API level. OpenStack has already been integrated into the public and private cloud platforms of multiple providers including Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Co., IBM and Rackspace Inc., as well as several telco clouds, and it supports open APIs from providers such as Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft Azure. This makes it a prime candidate for private clouds that will eventually become the hubs of hybrid architectures.

Five months ago, at the last OpenStack conference covered on theCUBE, the technology was still immature and its Neutron “network as a service” module was shaky. The technology is developing quickly, however, and a new OpenStack version – Mitaka – was announced early this month. Early adopters, in particular several large telcos, have already adapted it for their internal production cloud environments. This conference will provide a window into the state of the technology and early use cases.

Questions

Among the questions that should be covered on theCUBE from the conference are:

• What is new in Mitaka?
• How much support does Mitaka provide for containers and stateless computing, including Docker and Kubernetes?
• Can OpenStack itself be run in a container? How far along is Kolla, which is intended to containerize OpenStack services?
• How much support do AWS, Google and Azure provide for OpenStack hybrid clouds?
• Is Neutron stable and production-ready in Mitaka?
• Are we close to seeing Oracle, SAP or Microsoft running on OpenStack private clouds?

If you cannot get to the conference in person, watch theCUBE live to learn the answers to these and other questions. Videos from theCUBE are also posted on YouTube, along with those from numerous other IT industry events from the last six years.

Image courtesy OpenStack Summit 2016