Bullish Momentum on Hybrid Cloud Bodes Well for OpenStack

As I hinted in my last blog, RightScale’s State of the Cloud 2015 Report uncovered that moving to cloud is now a given for pretty well all IT organizations. The extraordinary take away for me was that 82% of surveyed organizations say that their sights are set on hybrid cloud.

If you don’t understand WHY this is happening, have a look at my blog entry on hybrid cloud: what why and howwith plenty of cross-referenced articles.

This fundamentally bodes well for OpenStack, but we don’t yet see it at 82% adoption…why not? There is the obvious fud out there about OpenStack immaturity, but that is easily disproved by example. More importantly, I think there’s still a lot of cloud-washing, but even with respect to hybrid cloud. Is this hybrid cloud end state as simple as using multiple private and public connected clouds? No, but I assure you there is a lot of that going on, and those folks saying they’re hybridized. Getting to that point is great, but it is not the end game.

To realize use cases like split-tier apps, split-tier storage (shout out to Google for their nearline storage solution), multi-DC DA/DR for multiple apps and storage, best venue cloud moves and cloud bursting, we need to get closer homogeneity (-explanation-) at the IaaS layer, and probably an iPaaS for higher-in-the-stack PaaS and SaaS integrations. At the IaaS it’s a given that it’s going to be OpenStack, otherwise you’ll be in a small corner you’ll have painted yourself into.

If more folks needed to execute on these sophisticated use cases in short order, I predict the OpenStack adoption would spike. Alas, there are some IT orgs still fighting fires and keeping the lights on. As the wider IT “tide” rises to greater levels of automation, all the OpenStack “boats” will rise because of their amenability to the hybrid use cases (simple and sophisticated) on the broadest set of public clouds, providing the best outcomes in economics and choice. But this tide is rising slowly, and thus so is OpenStack. Things bode well for those notice it, less so for those that don’t.

Please Show Your Support

In this last month since I asked for your voting support, we’ve been overflowing with great news around OpenStack…

First and foremost thanks to our OpenStack Summit session proposal voters! Cutting to the chase…many session proposals were accepted... Remarkable success!

OpenStack Vancouver 2015 Sessions

1. Building a Secure Multi-tenant Cloud for SaaS Applications: Challenges and Lessons Learned – We’ll be presenting with our customer friends and OpenContrail advocates from Symantec, WorkDay and Lithium (hey Lithium... thanks for powering this blog )
2. Delivering an End-to-end Automated and Carrier-class NFV (Network Functions Virtualization) Use Case – We’ll be presenting with our customer friends and OpenContrail advocates from NTT-i3.
3. Deploying a Hybrid Cloud with OpenStack: Dynamic Service Automation – We’ll be presenting with our technology alliance partner friends and OpenContrail advocates from Ubuntu, Supported by Canonical.
4. Service Chaining Using Neutron Networks Implemented as Standard Compliant Layer-3 VPNs – Our OpenContrail advocates and customer friends at AT&T will be presenting.
5. OpenStack Ousts vCenter for DevOps and Unites IT Silos at AVG Technologies – Our OpenContrail advocates and customer friends at tcp cloud will be presenting with their customer AVG.
6. NFV – VNFs and Juniper's Contrail with Ubuntu OpenStack – We are pleased to join our alliance partner Canonical, Wednesday May 20, 2:40 - 3:20pm
7. External session: OpenContrail Users Group – We are please to continue our strong support of OpenContrail by sponsoring this OCUG event that will be held just down the street on Wednesday morning.

These are all MUST-SEE sessions, so hit the links and add them to your summit calendar straightaway.

More news on the summit

We are gearing up to support our booth with a few demos, and we’ll have a conference room available for private meetings. Should you want to chat, a private test drive of OpenContrail, or the full Juniper Contrail Cloud experience, let us know, and we’ll pencil you in for a meeting. Otherwise, be sure to stop by the booth. We’ll have some cool surprises and invites to be had, but more on that closer to the actual event.

Juniper In the news

Quite literally in the press we’ve had some great updates.

• Canonical-Juniper partnership: We announced a strengthened partnership with Ubuntu- Supported by Canonical right around MWC2015. What’s been in the works as Contrail Cloud for some time (Juniper’s OpenStack + OpenContrail + Ceph + Server Management) is now backed by Ubuntu OpenStack and Ubuntu OS engineering and support proxied through Juniper. Furthermore, Canonical’s offering of Ubuntu OpenStack is thoroughly proven out with OpenContrail and Juniper Contrail Networking. More…
• Mirantis-Juniper partnership: With a complementary webinar co-hosted by Mirantis and Juniper, last week Mirantis announced the completion of a documented and proven MOS + OpenContrail reference architecture. Catering to DIYs, Mirantis Fuel automated deployments, or Mirantis professional services deployments, Mirantis is embracing open networking with the leading open SDN solution based on their customers’ demand.More…
• Orange Business Services (OBS) was in the SDN-MPLS World Congress news coverage by Light Reading, on record publicly saying that they’re going with Juniper Contrail Networking as their cloud networking and NFV solution of choice. 

This was originally published on the Juniper Networks blog.

Celebrating Teachers of Love – International Women’s Day

On this day I give much thanks to the women in my life and those the world over. You are great teachers of a many a feminine things near and dear to my own heart like love – a divineness I practice connectedness to in yoga – and beauty – one of the oldest facets of my profession as a marketer.

Cheers to gratitude for women’s role uplifting other women in the face of a still-finding-mutual world (link to an insightful story from J Brown on that topic that I read this week), and cheers to the timeless Shiva-Shakti relationship you provide to us men, in balancing us and in unbalancing us.

Leaving Las Vegas – Delusion Detox

A long weekend full of excess and indulgence has come to a close, and boy, was it a good idea I decided to take Monday off of work to recover.

With a bit of a foggy head, when I laid awake in bed for a moment this morning before packing up, I was somewhat relieved it was all over. I gave the dark “yang” side of my soul lots of attention in Nevada’s Sin City. Vegas is such an obvious dissent from my normal foot forward of a yogi and a general promoter of peace, but I don’t explain my lavish weekend as a slip.

On one hand we could denounce Vegas labelling its culture of sin and thirst for “more,” as dysfunctional, but it doesn’t need to be cancerous or unsustainable if it’s done with awareness, and moreover I think it is important to pay tribute to both sides of our soul, the yin and the yang. Thus, dancing with the devil in Vegas can really just be about acknowledging how crazy we are, and hopefully enjoying it at the same time.

Having departed the phony and manmade land of wonders, and now being back at home, it’s time to cleanse the mind and body, making sure that delusion just doesn’t stick or become addictive. Physically it’s pretty simple with my green juice and routine of running and yoga, but cleansing the mind is much trickier. I think it starts with acknowledging our true nature and the dualistic planes in which we operate in this world. After acknowledging our inner crazy and the love to party and partake in what we’ve made, the next step is to not let the pendulum swing too far the other way. It's overcompensating to renounce manmade re-creation and recreation. Sometimes, I noticed myself in Vegas walking down the strip, thinking to myself, “gosh that is/they are so stupid...” This judging of course is just as crazy as the cast subject. Similarly judgingly, we could say Vegas is no match for Mother Nature, but human nature and what we make can too be beautiful and remarkable.

I think the beauty in going to Vegas is experiencing a part of our own delusion and dark side (you see it regardless of how much you’re really in it). The trick when we’re not walking our ideal middle way is “sustainable deviations.” Of course Vegas is so intense that single, short and/or infrequent trips are common. That’s certainly true for me. Now that I’m back where I spend most of my time, it’s time to take a big breath and realign to center today on my day off.

PS. From all the great fiction, food, EDM clubs, cocktails and socializing, I do have one souvenir picture from the bar last night with the quintessential bad ass SLJ in Pulp Fiction.