OpenStack Celebrates Third Birthday

The terrible twos are over for OpenStack. Today, the open source cloud platform that has become increasingly popular celebrates its third birthday. Considering that the cloud platform started as a project initiated by Rackspace (RAX) and NASA in 2010, it has made tremendous gains in the cloud computing world and was even given new life last year when Rackspace spun it off into its own organization.

The OpenStack Foundation launched last September with 5,600 members and has continued to grow since then. That’s a lot of support for a system that is still in its fledgling years—although don’t tell that to its biggest proponents. To date, there are now more than 40 global OpenStack user groups and more than 10,000 community members in 121 countries. Additionally, as noted in a blog post by Claire Massey, the OpenStack community recently crossed the 1,000 authors threshold.

OpenStack currently boasts 172 companies contributing to its development.

Based on the number of vendors and channel partners supporting OpenStack, as well as the interest that seems to be following the development of the platform, OpenStack is likely going to be around for awhile in the IaaS space and will almost certainly continue to gain its share of followers.

With a six-month release timeline, the latest version of OpenStack is Grizzly, which saw its general release on June 6. The community should be busy plugging away at the next release (named Havana), which is due to be released to the public Oct. 17.

Whenever a new platform is launched, there is always some concern as to whether it will become the next big thing or fail to get any notice. Under Rackspace’s guidance, OpenStack grew from little more than a science project to a growing cloud platform IaaS offering. To be able to spin the project off into its own organization little more than two years after its birth is a great tribute to its success.

To celebrate its third birthday, the OpenStack Foundation is hosting birthday parties around the world. Check out Massey’s blog for dates and locations. And save me a piece of cake.