Data Backup Digest

In a move that is expected to establish mainstream standards in cloud computing, Intel has announced their part in the OpenStack Innovation Center. The recent announcements puts them in a position of direct collaboration with Rackspace and the University of Texas at San Antonio, also known as USTA, in an effort to maintain the consistency as well as the popularity of OpenStack deployments.

According to a joint statement that was released by Rackspace and Intel, the goal of the OpenStack Innovation Center is to: “accelerate the development of enterprise capabilities and significantly add to the number of developers contributing to upstream OpenStack code. The project will bring together OpenStack engineers from Rackspace and Intel to advance the scalability, manageability and reliability of OpenStack by adding new features, functionality and eliminating bugs through upstream code contributions.”

The OpenStack platform was originally introduced in 2010 through a partnership with NASA and the popularity of OpenStack quickly blossomed. However, some IT professionals are quick to point out that some past contributions from organizations such as HP, IBM and even Intel yielded less-than-stellar results. Despite this fact, Intel, Rackspace and USTA remain optimistic about the latest news.

Darrin Hanson, vice president and general manager of the private cloud with Rackspace, spoke about the draw of OpenStack. He was quoted as saying: “For companies, the promise of OpenStack is that it gives them a platform that allows them to be much more efficient, much more nimble and it really improves speed to market for their customer facing and revenue generating applications.” He continued by saying: “It gives them a really flexible and efficient platform where the IT department can go from being a call center to a center of strategy and to an enabler of revenue.”

Scott Crenshaw, senior vice president of product and strategy with Rackspace, spoke about the need for the OpenStack Innovation Center by saying: “We are excited to collaborate with Intel and look forward to working with the OpenStack community to make the world’s leading open-source cloud operating system even stronger. Rackspace delivers its customers four-nines availability using entirely upstream trunk code. All of the Innovation Center’s contributions will be made available freely, to everyone.”

Finally, the fact that the OpenStack Innovation Center is physically located in Rackspace’s own San Antonio headquarters means an influx of IT jobs to the immediate area. In fact, some of Intel’s team has already relocated from their campus in Santa Clara, CA. According to the latest announcement, as many as 30 USTA students will be given the opportunity to work in the OpenStack Innovation Center per year. As such, the city of San Antonio will be fully prepared to host a 21st century workforce as jobs begin to evolve and integrate with future technologies.

More information about the OpenStack Innovation Center can be located at Rackspace’s official website, www.rackspace.com, where you’ll also find information regarding Rackspace’s own solutions, infrastructure and partners.