The open-source movement is taking over business software. There are benefits; open source is usually less expensive, it’s easy to add on functionality and there’s a community to draw on. The trick, though, is making a business out of open-source solutions. One such business is Rackspace, Inc., a managed cloud computing company.

To gain some insight into how open-source business works, Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Stu Miniman (@stu), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, visited the IBM Edge 2016 conference in Las Vegas. There, they sat down with Major Hayden, principal architect at Rackspace, Inc.

Building on OpenStack

The discussion started with a look at OpenStack, an open-source cloud computing platform. Hayden pointed out that the OpenStack community is growing like crazy. He mentioned there are a lot of small things Rackspace used to sweat about that it doesn’t worry about anymore. The community produced solutions, so that low-hanging fruit is gone now.

Hayden described OpenStack as being made from a bunch of parts, comparing it to a car. In the same way a customer wouldn’t order a bunch of car parts and try to put them together, businesses rely on Rackspace to put their systems together for them. Together with the customer, Rackspace makes good choices about how OpenStack should be deployed.

Customers and open-source changes

Setting up an installation starts with a process. Hayden explained that for networking and storage, instead of blinding the customer with a myriad of options, Rackspace offers a small selection of recommended choices. Rackspace then customizes the system from there. As for security, it hardens the customer’s infrastructure in an automated fashion.

Along with the technology, Rackspace itself has changed over the years. Hayden felt it was very exciting, because the company often comes across new use cases it has never seen before. If there are changes Rackspace needs to make to meet the customer, it does those shifts.

“We always reorganize ourselves around what customers need,” Hayden said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of IBM Edge 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE