OpenStack Foundation: Funding Open Source Cloud $4M Annually
Nineteen companies have formed the OpenStack Foundation, vowing to invest millions of dollars into an open source cloud initiative. It sounds like the OpenStack Foundation will seek to raise at least $4 million annually for OpenStack’s development as a public cloud and private cloud solution.
Key OpenStack Foundation backers include AT&T (NYSE: T), Canonical, HP (NYSE: HPQ), IBM (NYSE: IBM), Nebula, Rackpsace (NYSE: RAX), Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) and SUSE, among 11 other firms, according to the foundation’s launch announcement.
According to the OpenStack Wiki, Rackspace had been paying about $4 million to $5 million to cover OpenStack’s annual operating budget. But now, it sounds like those funding activities will shift to the OpenStack Foundation.
During a conference call with Talkin’ Cloud today, Jonathan Bryce, OpenStack Project Policy Board and co-founder Rackspace Cloud, said OpenStack Foundation is the next natural step for ensuring the OpenStack ecosystem continues to grow, thrive and accelerate in success.
“This is not just a software project,” said Bryce. “This is much bigger than that. It’s an ecosystem of service providers running public clouds, businesses running private clouds, and IT consulting firms assisting the effort.”
OpenStack Foundation Funding Levels
OpenStack Foundation Platinum members each will pump $500,000 annually into the foundation for the next three years. Gold members each will pay $50,000 to $200,000 annually to participate; corporate sponsors will invest $25,000 per year and startup sponsors will invest $10,000 per year. According to the OpenStack Foundation Wiki, Rackspace had been paying OpenStack’s annual $4 million to $5 million operating budget to this point.
The OpenStack Foundation launches roughly one week after Citrix Systems shifted its own CloudStack standard to the Apache open source organization.
Some pundits may suggest the Open Source Foundation is a knee-jerk reaction to the CloudStack and Apache buzz. However, the OpenStack Foundation has been a work in progress for quite some time. And I suspect the official launch was timed to coincide with next week’s OpenStack Design Summit and Conference (April 16-20, San Francisco), where numerous companies will talk about their early use of OpenStack.
