OpenStack Plans Next Two Cloud Platform Releases at First Public Design Summit

SAN ANTONIO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--OpenStack™, an open source cloud project with broad developer and commercial support, completed its first public Design Summit last week, which attracted more than 250 people from 90 companies and 14 countries to plan the next two releases, code-named ‘Bexar’ and ‘Cactus.’ Taking place at the Weston Centre in San Antonio, Texas, the four-day event was hosted by Rackspace® Hosting, a founding member of the open source project.

“The themes for the week were how to execute on enterprise and service provider deployments, and the immense opportunity for the commercial ecosystem.”

The OpenStack Design Summit featured two separate tracks, one consisting of developer-led sessions to plan the next two code releases, and one for interested users and the partner ecosystem to discuss deployment and commercial opportunities. The Summit also featured an 'InstallFest,' where attendees were able to test and document the installation process on a live, on-site environment provided by Dell and powered by the company's PowerEdge C server line.

“From development, to documentation and deployment, last week’s OpenStack Design Summit enabled the OpenStack community to come together to learn and make the key decisions for the next two code releases,” said Jim Curry, chief stacker and general manager, OpenStack. “The themes for the week were how to execute on enterprise and service provider deployments, and the immense opportunity for the commercial ecosystem.”

Before the Summit broke into the technical and business tracks, several keynote speakers recapped the progress and vision for the OpenStack community, including Chris C. Kemp, CTO for IT at NASA; Jesse Andrews, co-founder of Anso Labs; Joe Tobolski, senior director-research, data & platforms R&D group at Accenture; and Mark Interrante, vice president of product at Rackspace. Additional speakers in the business track included Christian Reilly, manager of global systems engineering at Bechtel; David Lemphers, director, cloud computing and SaaS at PricewaterhouseCoopers; Andrew Shafer, vice president of engineering at Cloudscaling; and Alex Polvi, CEO and founder of Cloudkick.

Dozens of developers contributed to the first ‘Austin’ code release in October and proposed features for the next ‘Bexar’ release in Q1 2011, which were reviewed and mapped out at the Design Summit. Awards were given to developers and documentation writers who made significant contributions to the first release, including Vish Ishaya of Anso Labs, Jay Pipes of Rackspace and Alex Polvi of Cloudkick for the developer awards, and Stephen Milton of ISO Media, Anthony Young of Anso Labs and David Pravec for documentation.

About OpenStack™

OpenStack is a large-scale open source cloud project and community established to drive industry standards, end cloud lock-in and speed the adoption of cloud technologies by service providers and enterprises. The project currently includes OpenStack Object Storage, a fully distributed object store, and OpenStack Compute, a scalable compute provisioning engine. OpenStack was founded by Rackspace® Hosting through its wholly owned subsidiary, OpenStack, LLC, and has the support of more than 35 technology industry leaders. For more information and to join the community, visit OpenStack.org.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of Open Stack and Rackspace Hosting could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including any statements concerning expected development of the OpenStack project; the acceptance of OpenStack technology as an industry standard; anticipated operational and financial benefits from any development of the OpenStack project; the participation of other companies or individuals in the OpenStack project; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include the possibility that expected benefits from the OpenStack project may not materialize because the underlying technology is not reliable or generally compatible with industry standards; there are changes in technology that adversely affect the adoption of the standards, and other risks that are described in Rackspace Hosting's Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2010, filed with the SEC on November 9, 2010. Except as required by law, Rackspace Hosting assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements publicly, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future.