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The commercial side of OpenStack cloud software

What is the maturity level of OpenStack, and the demand for the skilled people on the local and global job market?

Marcin Nicpon / August 27, 2020
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From the perspective of a service provider who deploys and manages their services with OpenStack, there are two major commercial options: use open source OpenStack as a distribution or commercial solution.

  1. Open source OpenStack solutions are based on the core technologies that come from the OpenStack community (openstack.org).  
  2. Commercial solutions use the same core technologies, but technologies are turned into real commercial products. This means they deliver fully integrated, validated, automated software packages with guaranteed maintenance services.

There is no easy answer on which way to go, as both approaches have advantages and disadvantages. It all depends on the situation, use case and market.  
  
In terms of cost, service providers calculate the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), which includes the cost of licensing, integration, maintenance, flexibility (adding new features) and operation. 
  
The open-source solution brings no licensing costs; however, it does require more skilled staff to integrate, deploy, customize and optimize OpenStack software components, or provide maintenance – which can lead to the same exceptional benefits as commercial solutions.  
  
At the same time, having skilled staff enables service providers for much more flexibility to choose specific components or add more features by themselves when needed. 
  
In contrast, the commercial option provides “out of the box” solutions with guaranteed maintenance, as well as a great level of automation and support. It reduces the need to build new skills in-house, in turn reducing Time To Market (TTM) for the deployment and monetization of new services. However, it does come with licensing fees. New features and component choice are also a bit more limited, as it is up to the software vendor to decide what goes into the package and what features come first, according to their roadmaps. 

Read more: If you want to learn more about the history of OpenStack and the software stack itself, please have a look at my previous blog post 'The OpenStack Story'. 

OpenStack deployments and maturity 

OpenStack software’s maturity is proven by several deployments across many different industry sectors, such as data centres, automotive, telecom and retail. 75%* of total deployments are on-premise private cloud.  
  
More details about OpenStack deployments can be found here. Additionally, market analysts envision the further growth of the OpenStack deployments market by up to $5.66 billion over the next two years.**

which_industries_use_openstack.png
                     
Source: openstack.org 

 

High demand in the job market 

As cloud technologies evolve and the market share of OpenStack deployments grow, the demand for DevOps skills booms. Additionally, because OpenStack technologies are merging and embracing containerized solutions, OpenStack expertise is providing a very solid foundation for the future as cloud technology continues to evolve. 
  
Due to the dynamic growth in demand for OpenStack skills, we are constantly looking for talented engineers in this area, so do not hesitate to approach us via TietoEVRY Careers or LinkedIn
  
Our next blog post will take a deep dive into getting started with OpenStack at home. We will also share several hints and tricks, gathered from TietoEVRY team engagements with our customers over several years of expertise in this area. Stay tuned. 

Further reading: 

Marcin Nicpon
Telco Ecosystem Solutions Director

Marcin has more than 18 years of experience in Telco and Cloud delivering software solutions for OEMs, TEMs and Silicon vendors designing and optimizing mobile communications networks and cloud solutions. He is very strong in NFV area, including implementations of several ETSI based use-cases.

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