OpenStack is growing up fast, having seen success connecting clouds across large infrastructure providers, spanning IBM, Amazon Web Services and telcos. These early adopters have set the stage for businesses of all sizes seeking prosperity in hybrid cloud, as OpenStack deployments and full-production use cases gain in number and allure.

Sharing the boastworthy figures behind OpenStack growth, user attitudes and deployments, Heidi Joy Tretheway, senior marketing manager at the OpenStack Foundation, sat down with Stu Miniman (@stu) and John Walls, cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during the OpenStack Summit in Austin, TX. Tretheway revealed the results of the April 2016 OpenStack User Survey: A Snapshot of OpenStack Users’ Attitudes and Deployment. Here are just some of the findings discussed:

About the study

“This is the largest survey we’ve ever done. It’s 25 percent larger … than last the last survey. Sixteen-hundred plus people answered, representing more than 1,100 companies. So that’s really exciting to have that kind of breadth — we’re not seeing it being overly weighted toward one particular-size company. We actually saw a really good distribution of the size of the company. Everything from small startups, one to nine people, to companies that say they’re over 100,000. So a really good cross section of the community.”

Deployments increase

“Of all the things that we learned in the User Survey, 54 odd questions, our favorite thing that we found was that 65 percent of OpenStack deployments are currently in production or full operational use, and that is up 33 percent over just a year ago. So when we were back in Vancouver about a year ago at the summit, we were saying, ‘Rah-rah, we’re at 49 percent of deployments and production and now we’re almost to two-thirds.'”

Containers: Emerging technology

“Seventy percent of the users in the User Survey said that containers as an emerging technology were interesting to them, and that outpaced software-defined networking and network function of virtualization and bare metal, as well as the other two top three interesting emerging technologies.

“What that tells us is really the future of OpenStack. When we see … 44 percent of people indicating that they were interested in using Magnum as a future project (right now very, very few clouds are running Magnum in production), but when we see 44 percent of the community indicate that they are interested in using Magnum, you can expect some major growth out of Magnum and then also out of some of our other services  that have well over 30 percent interest.

“We have over 50 clouds that are running 15 or more different projects. I mean there’s six core projects, so once you start running 15 projects, you’re going way down the line on some really experimental, interesting, emerging technologies.”

Consumers of technology

“Some of the best-known brands, the largest brands in the world are using OpenStack. We learned today in the keynote that more than 50 percent of the Fortune 100 companies are running OpenStack. That is a phenomenal number. So you can’t simply say, ‘Oh this OpenStack thing is isolated in IT or it’s the domain of telcos or even just large companies.’ Small companies are using OpenStack as well. (It is) pervasive in all walks of life, whether you are going to Walmart to buy bread or whether you are driving your VW, you are going to see that throughout.”

Telco use growing

“In terms of significant testing on this survey versus the last survey, I didn’t see major changes in the industry. I think the industry that is most interesting for us to look at right now is telcos, and our most recent report on network functions virtualization goes deep into 10 different use cases. Ten different telcos, not just North American sales rose, all over the world, to dig into what they’re doing with it.”

Market shifts

“While we saw that one up and to the right curve on production deployment … the big stunner for me was around business drivers. Ninety-seven percent of people who took the survey (1,600 users) told us that one of their top five drivers for adopting OpenStack was standardizing on that platform. OpenStack has become the enterprise standard for infrastructure as a service. That’s a really big deal. The way that I mean surprised is where 97 percent of users say that’s a business driver and only 60 percent of them said that just six months ago.

“I see very homogeneous answers between this survey and the last survey. That big of a shift means that something happened in the industry that people now believe that this is critical as uniting around the use of standardized ABIs [Application Binary Interface Standards].”

Watch the video below to learn more about the study, or download the OpenStack User Survey: A Snapshot of OpenStack Users’ Attitudes and Deployments.

Photo by SiliconANGLE