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OpenStack: love it or hate it?

How your staff dictates your relationship to OpenStack, what it takes to become an expert and the latest in job moves in our weekly update…

August 7, 2015
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Here’s the news from the OpenStack world you won’t want to miss — the musings, polemics and questions posed by the larger community.
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In case you missed it

We’ve talked a lot about how OpenStack is catnip for recruiters, but we’re also seeing the flip side: if you can’t find enough people who know what to do with it, you may end up hating it.

That’s according to Daniel Chow, COO and CTO at Silicon Mechanics, in an opinion piece titled "I love open-source OpenStack. Here’s why you may not." for Computer World. It’s worth reading in full, but the crux of why you might come to despise OpenStack depends on who you work with.

"The costs of acquiring proficient open-source OpenStack talent is high, and it may be difficult for your company or organization to retain that talented staff for long due to market forces and increasing demand for their services. For example, if you elect a flavor from a Tier 1 or turnkey provider, proficiency now requires a level of specialization in that particular version — and the provider you choose will likely have already acquired the most proficient staff in the industry."

If you’re more interested in how to get one of those jobs, Cody Bunch — who co-wrote OpenStack Cookbook and #vBrownBag podcast — takes on a timely AskOpenStack question about what distributions are "mandatory" to become an OpenStack expert.

"The short answer to these questions, is that no, no specific Linux or OpenStack distribution is required to become an expert. That being said, some familiarity with Linux will give you a good foundation for working with OpenStack. Additionally, an OpenStack distribution will help ease the learning curve associated with learning OpenStack."

And in other job news, OpenStack Foundation board member and major longtime contributor Monty Taylor announced that he left Hewlett-Packard for IBM.

What does this mean for you? Stefano Maffulli, former OpenStack developer advocate now at DreamHost, thinks it may signal a push for OpenStack private clouds.

"HP clearly is targeting the enterprise market, with their public cloud used mainly as a supporting mechanism for the private clouds," he writes on his blog. "I think OpenStack will benefit from more focus on public clouds: I have the feeling those are taken for granted…Hopefully lots of positive changes aimed at public cloud users will keep going upstream (and we can avoid creating yet another working group in openstack-land)."


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