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Forrester says: ready, set, OpenStack!

Need backup to get OpenStack firing all cylinders where you work? Here are two Forrester reports to get you on the right track.

August 5, 2015
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Two recent reports from Forrester gives a major boost to OpenStack adoption, one calling its "viability and presence in the market irrefutable.”

You can download both of the reports for a limited time on the OpenStack.org website.
 If you’ve been working with OpenStack for more than a few months, the takeaways will sound familiar. However, if you’re an infrastructure/ops person interested in adopting OpenStack and need fuel for the fire, you’re in the right place.

In the first report, Forrester analysts spoke to eight OpenStack end-users and 10 OpenStack ecosystem vendors to discuss the best practices and common pitfalls faced when adopting OpenStack. They also mined results from the latest OpenStack user surveys, which you can find on Superuser broken down into deployments, business drivers and app developer insights.

Here are the highlights of Forrester’s findings:

  • OpenStack is for “regular” companies. Like Disney, BMW, Disney, and Wal-Mart, not necessarily your snazzy digital startups, in other words. The message: this means your company, too.
  • These companies use OpenStack because it’s easy, cheap, prevents vendor lock-in and offers self-service developer access. Those are the easy buy-ins, but the report underlines the staying power of OpenStack. “Its adoption supports a much larger transformation toward agility and development efficiency and is not tied to virtualization or consolidation efforts.”
  • Sure, OpenStack has flaws, but get over it. “All software has its issues. Open source efforts typically suffer from transparency where “issues and bugs get blown out of proportion,” says author Lauren E. Nelson adding that OpenStack adopters know this and push forward anyway.

The most detailed part of the report provides blueprints how to build your OpenStack team — the engine of this adoption, if you will. Start with determining your consumption model (direct or distro), using the OpenStack Marketplace for an updated list of vendor options. Then, it’s time to sketch out what your staffing needs will be — lining up systems architects, operators with open source/Linux chops, an on-call infrastructure service, and modern developers with infrastructure experience. The report winds up with two pages of helpful links to articles and other talks that will bolster OpenStack adoption.

Forrester also interviewed a global enterprise user to conduct a commissioned study on the total economic impact of OpenStack. With a net present value (NPV) of nearly $3.6 million over three years, risk-adjusted benefits for the user included reduced staff needed to manage infrastructure, reduced cost for sparing and hardware maintenance and reduced cost of data center power and cooling.

Forrester noted that the increased time of using OpenStack would allow the benefits to continue for a longer period of time and increase the realized return on investment (ROI).

Superuser is always looking for stories of OpenStack adoption, contact [email protected] to find out more.

Cover Photo by Daniel Incandela // CC BY NC

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