As OpenStack Certification Efforts Spread Out, Which Vendors Will Win?

OpenStack remains a young cloud computing platform, but it's becoming clear that we will see its compatibility with other technologies getting much better this year. As reported here, Mirantis is calling for and helping to build a standard, open set of tools that vendors can use to self-certify compatibility of their solutions with the upstream OpenStack codebase. This will help everything from drivers to APIs to become more friendly for those deploying OpenStack. Meanwhile, Red Hat and others are pursuing their own compatibility and certification-focused efforts.

As noted on GigaOM, there actually are many certification and compatibility initiatives surrounding OpenStack:

"Rackspace spokeswoman said that company is 'actively reviewing the Mirantis program' but other OpenStack players said there already is a community process in place that will accomplish the same goal. Dreamhost CEO Simon Anderson referred me to the OpenStack DefCore committee."

Of the various initiatives, Matt Asay has suggested that OpenStack really needs Red Hat:

"OpenStack needs a dominant vendor, someone to guide and control development. In open source, control comes from code. The more code one contributes, the more influence they exert. Though OpenStack was started by Rackspace, today Red Hat dominates contributions. The reason is clear: Red Hat needs OpenStack to complement its full-stack strategy against Microsoft and VMware in the enterprise."

The final shoe that must drop for one vendor to start really succeeding with an OpenStack strategy is delivering top-notch support, and Red Hat has proven expertise in that area after supporting Linux and other open source tools so well for years. All of the compatibility and certification programs going on are going to make the OpenStack ecosystem healthier this year, but it won't be long until we see some winning vendors emerging as well.