"In recent years, OpenStack, software utilized for the establishment and management of public and private cloud platforms, has had a substantial impact on the computing industry. Now, not only is this set of tools being used in more initiatives than ever, but the biggest names in the technology sector are growing their brands by acquiring OpenStack-based companies. The result of these mergers is an even bigger shift toward OpenStack in enterprise IT environments.
""IT is headed toward being something more akin to a utility service, transformed by OpenStack's open standardized cloud architecture, which will improve interoperability and render vendor lock-in a thing of the past,"" wrote Network World contributor Orlando Bayter.
OpenStack acquisitions: Who is buying who?
Bayter noted that this year, several significant OpenStack acquisitions took place. However, it appears that the trend toward OpenStack didn't begin in 2015.
According to ITWorld contributor Nancy Gohring, some of the most critical acquisitions taking place last year were also tied to OpenStack. This includes a number of big purchases, such as EMC's acquisition of Cloudscaling, a provider of OpenStack-based private cloud platforms, for an estimated $50 million.
Last year also saw the purchase of Eucalyptus, a provider of private cloud technology compatible with Amazon Web Services, by HP. Gohring pointed out that this acquisition likely hinged upon Eucalyptus' CEO Marten Mickos, former MySQL CEO, who will now manage HP's cloud sector.
Cisco also made moves within the OpenStack community, purchasing Metacloud, a unique company offering OpenStack private cloud as a service, enabling remote management of customers' cloud environments.
Red Hat made two notable OpenStack-based acquisitions last year, including its purchase of eNovance for $95 million, as well as Inktank for $175 million.
""[T]raditional enterprise vendors continue to see potential in OpenStack and they're willing to shell out the cash to buy the expertise and technology they need to pursue the market,"" Gohring wrote.
2015 OpenStack mergers
This year brought even more OpenStack acquisitions by big names in the technology industry, including IBM. Fortune contributor Barb Darrow reported that in June, IBM moved forward with its purchase of Blue Box, a provider of OpenStack private clouds. Many experts noted that this merger will considerably boost IBM's cloud company SoftLayer, which it acquired for $2 million two years ago. Although IBM surpassed its goal of $7 billion in cloud revenue before this most recent acquisition, it's clear the cloud is still a prime focus for the company.
Cisco also made its second OpenStack-based acquisition this year with the purchase of Piston Cloud Computing, a startup offering OpenStack cloud infrastructure on commodity hardware, Data Center Knowledge contributor Jason Verge reported.
Bayter noted that OpenStack can be considerably valuable for service providers, particularly due to the technology's ability to support private-to-public scalability and workload portability. This will surely change the way enterprises interact with their services.
""Adoption of OpenStack by these providers signals a major shift for the industry, moving away from dependence on hardware sales and heavy contractual service agreements to a scalable IaaS utilities model, where customers pay for what they need when they need it and expect it to just work,"" Bayter wrote. ""Providers may need to shoulder the burden of maintaining data centers but will reap the reward of pulling the maximum value from their commodity investments."""
