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OpenStack Taiwan Day: rapid growth ahead

The most anticipated local tech event of the year, as told by Joanna Huang, general manager of Aptira, an OpenStack Foundation Gold Member.

August 25, 2015
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The second annual OpenStack Day Taiwan was held in the Taipei International Convention Centerโ€Ž, just a block away from Taiwanโ€™s tallest building, Taipei 101.

Itโ€™s definitely the most anticipated annual IT event in Taiwan this year and has received the highest level of attention from a wide range of industries with over 1,700 people registered, 32 local and international speakers, and 20 event sponsors.

OpenStack Foundation COO Mark Collier and community manager Tom Fifield kicked things off with a giant cake to celebrate OpenStack’s fifth birthday. Aptira CTO Kavit Munshi was invited to give talks at event and interviewed by local media to share his comprehensive community experience and deep insights into OpenStack technology. He was amazed by the active participation by local community and exponential growth in OpenStack interest in Taiwan.

Aptira has engaged in nourishing the open community and promoting OpenStack technology in Taiwan since 2014. It seems not long ago that the very first OpenStack meetup took place in April 2014 with around 100 attendees. This August, we are happy to say we have successfully reached the goal of community development at the national level with collaborative efforts from local community.

Based on our initial statistics result, OpenStack has diverse uses in Taiwan and its users range from telcos to electronics and semiconductor giants. There are at least 200 companies in Taiwan that have started proof-of-concept projects or are building dedicated teams to introduce OpenStack technologies to help reduce costs for IT infrastructure deployment and increase the efficiency and productivity of physical resources.

The following is the list of some users from our survey:

  • Video game industry
  • Global IT companies
  • Advertising tech companies
  • Mobile tech firms
  • Semiconductor companies
  • Electronic commerce companies
  • Telcos
  • Research laboratories
  • Government
  • Internet-based retailers
  • Electronics manufacturers
  • Travel agencies
  • โ€ฆmore

Overall, Taiwan firms have been relatively conservative in their uptake of open-source products due to some concerns about lacking of enterprise solution to support their needs. However, some of the most-profitable companies in Taiwan such as Foxconn and Mediatek have been convinced to come aboard to expedite their innovation with OpenStack technology.

The Taiwanese market is ready for a change. Itโ€™s time for vendors to showcase the clear proof to their customers to give them the confidence to deploy OpenStack in real production settings.

This post first appeared on Aptira’s blog. Superuser is always interested in how-tos and other contributions, get in touch at [email protected]

Cover Photo // CC BY NC

Joanna Huang
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