Depending on OpenStack for crucial operations can be tricky, even for venturesome businesses. The technology is young, and still has yet to hit its stride as far as standardization. But the open door to new, bleeding-edge technologies is part of the appeal of OpenStack. Is there a way to keep the inflow of innovation without that translating to instability for the end user?

Alex Freedland, cofounder and CEO of Mirantis, Inc., spoke about what it means to be an OpenStack user today. “You have to be able to operate in the state of uncertainty and still make progress,” he told John Furrier (@furrier) and Lisa Martin (@Luccazara), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team.

“You can’t wait for clarity in order to take the next step,” Freedland said, adding that this can feel awkward for some businesses that are used to more static systems. “That’s a huge cultural shift for both us and our customers,” he said.

Controlling the chaos with containers

Freedland said that containers show a lot of promise for making OpenStack tractable. He said that the world standardized around containers in the last year, and now standardization may come to the “delivery vehicle by which container life cycle management is managed.” He believes that Kubernetes (container management system) will be the instrument in this, and what it all means is that “the whole innovation life cycle management of innovation and infrastructure can now become unified.”

Unification, he said, will enable automation and the ability to provide OpenStack as an AWS-style service.

Docker and Kubernetes will play starring roles in the evolution to automation and as-a-service, he said. He added that the container conversation will get more interesting and will lead to a new view of everything, including infrastructure, as a workload.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the OpenStack Days: Silicon Valley 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE