OpenStack

OpenStack is a free, open standard cloud computing platform. It is mostly deployed as infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) in both public and private clouds where virtual servers and other resources are made available to users.

According to the 451 Research Market Monitor (Open Source Software, OpenStack) from September 2019, OpenStack’s combined market size worldwide is $7.7B. It also continues to be one of the top three open-source projects in the world in terms of active contributions, along with the Linux kernel and Chromium.

NASA builds internal cloud

Early 2010

NASA builds its own cloud platform after struggling to scale Eucalyptus.

New cloud platform design begins

Early 2010 Rackspace

Rackspace decides to build a new, open source platform from scratch, due to poor scalability of their existing cloud platform.

NASA releases cloud software as open source

May 2010 Rackspace

Hearing about this software from NASA, I look at it and realize that we're very closely aligned. As the first outside engineer, I start working with NASA on their software.

OpenStack is born

May-July 2010 Rackspace/NASA

The collaboration between Rackspace and NASA eventually leads to the formation of OpenStack. I was instrumental in establishing community, governance, and project infrastructure for OpenStack.

Top contributor

2010-2014 Rackspace/Nebula/Cisco

Although I moved on from the project in 2014, as of July 2022, my early contributions still place me in the top 25 contributors of all time to OpenStack Compute.