OpenStack has grown dramatically in many ways but we have failed to integrate development, operations and business communities in a balanced way.

My most urgent observation from Paris is that these three critical parts of the community are having vastly different dialogs about OpenStack.

At the Conference, business people were talking were about core, stability and utility while the developers were talking about features, reorganizing and expanding projects. The operators, unfortunately segregated in a different location, were trying to figure out how to share best practices and tools.

Much of this structural divergence was intentional and should be (re)evaluated as we grow.

OpenStack events are split into distinct focus areas: the conference for business people, the summit for developers and specialized days for operators. While this design serves a purpose, the community needs to be taking extra steps to ensure communication. Without that communication, corporate sponsors and users may find it easier to solve problems inside their walls than outside in the community.

The risk is clear: vendors may find it easier to work on a fork where they have business and operational control than work within the community.

Inside the community, we are working to help resolve this challenge with several parallel efforts. As a community member, I challenge you to get involved in these efforts to ensure the project balances dev, biz and ops priorities.  As a board member, I feel it’s a leadership challenge to make sure these efforts converge and that’s one of the reasons I’ve been working on several of these efforts:

• OpenStack Project Managers (was Hidden Influencers) across companies in the ecosystem are getting organized into their own team. Since these managers effectively direct the majority of OpenStack developers, this group will allow
• DefCore Committee works to define a smaller subset of the overall OpenStack Project that will be required for vendors using the OpenStack trademark and logo. This helps the business community focus on interoperability and stability.
• Technical leadership (TC) lead “Big Tent” concept aligns with DefCore work and attempts to create a stable base platform while making it easier for new projects to enter the ecosystem. I’ve got a lot to say about this, but frankly, without safeguards, this scares people in the ops and business communities.
• An operations “ready state” baseline keeps the community from being able to share best practices – this has become a pressing need.  I’d like to suggest as OpenCrowbar an outside of OpenStack a way to help provide an ops neutral common starting point. Having the OpenStack developer community attempting to create an installer using OpenStack has proven a significant distraction and only further distances operators from the community.

We need to get past seeing the project primarily as a technology platform.  Infrastructure software has to deliver value as an operational tool for enterprises.  For OpenStack to thrive, we must make sure the needs of all constituents (Dev, Biz, Ops) are being addressed.