Google jumps on board as third-tier OpenStack sponsor
Fri 17 Jul 2015
The OpenStack Foundation announced yesterday that Google will be joining the not-for-profit organisation as its latest corporate sponsor.
Google will join the likes of HP, Intel, IBM, Rackspace, NetApp, EMC and Oracle in backing the OpenStack cloud operating system. As corporate sponsors, Google will sit below Platinum and Gold supporters as a third-tier backer.
“We’re excited to add our expertise in container-oriented computing to one of the most widely-adopted private cloud stacks, while improving interoperability between private and public clouds,” said Google project manager Craig McLuckie.
Google will offer its engineering resources to the OpenStack community, with a particular focus on Linux containers and merging container management solutions such as open-source orchestration toolkit Kubernetes with OpenStack projects like Magnum and Murano.
Despite its dominance in the public cloud arena, McLuckie suggested that Google was steering towards a hybrid cloud approach: “Few enterprises can move their entire infrastructure to the public cloud. For most, hybrid deployments will be the norm and OpenStack is emerging as a standard for the on-premises component of these deployments.”
“By joining forces with the OpenStack Foundation we hope to add container-native patterns to the toolbelt of enterprise developers, and improve interoperability between public and private clouds. We will be working over the coming months with the community to integrate Kubernetes, as well as complementary container technologies, to create a stronger hybrid cloud,” he said.
Through its partnership with the 5-year-old OpenStack framework, Google’s Cloud Platform is expected to integrate more closely with private data centres, which will give the search engine giant an advantage when targeting enterprise customers.
“Having a company with Google’s cloud-native chops backing OpenStack is huge, and we can’t wait to see what the future of open collaboration brings to cloud computing,” added Mark Collier, COO at the OpenStack Foundation.
