On OpenStack's Birthday, Multi-Cloud Deployments are on the Rise

Although Amazon Web Services (AWS) continues to dominate as a provider of cloud computing infrastructure and services, interest in hybrid clouds and open source cloud infrastructure is on the rise. Many of the smartest forecasters on the cloud scene called this trend out years ago, realizing that organizations would demand flexible, hybrid cloud platforms that allow public and private deployments that can fit with existing workflows.

The OpenStack cloud computing platform happens to be celebrating its third birthday, and the occasion has ushered in many online reviews of exactly where alternative cloud platforms stand relative to Amazon. The good news is that they are gaining traction.

There is no doubt that businesses and organizations are putting data in Amazon's EC2 S3 storage service at an incredible rate. In fact, as of early last year, there were 762 billion (762,000,000,000) objects in Amazon S3, and Amazon was processing over 500,000 requests per second for these objects at peak times. This usage has grown since then.

However, RightScale's State of the Cloud 2013 survey found that usage of and interest in multi-cloud deployments is on the rise at organizations.  In fact, among larger enterprises with more than 1,000 employees, 77 percent of respondents were pursuing multi-cloud deployments with the majority of those (47 percent) choosing hybrid cloud strategies. "Enterprises with hybrid cloud strategies are making progress toward their goals, with 61 percent of those organizations already running apps in public cloud, 38 percent in private cloud and 29 percent in hybrid cloud environments," RightScale reported.

Marking OpenStack's third birthday, ZDNet has an interview with Rackspace's Jim Curry, one of OpenStack's founders, who notes this about early development of OpenStack:

"After several years, Amazon Web Services was just moving into the mainstream and people were looking for not just for an open-source alternative, but for any AWS alternative."

Indeed, as organizations pursue multi-cloud strategies, they have to have alternatives to AWS. Note these findings from the RightScale survey:

"Among the 64 percent of respondents who plan to include a private cloud option as part of their cloud portfolio, open source private cloud solutions are taking the lead. 41 percent of those respondents plan to use only open source-based private cloud options (CloudStack, OpenStack or Eucalyptus), while another 29 percent plan to use a combination of open source and VMware options."

 Of course, as OpenStack celebrates its birthday, the really good news is that there is healthy competition in the cloud computing space. The last thing we want is a cloud landscape with only one provider.