Unleashing the Open Infrastructure Potentials at OpenInfra Days Vietnam 2019

Hosted in Hanoi and organized by the Vietnam OpenInfra User Group (VOI), Vietnam Internet Association (VIA), and VFOSSA, the second Vietnam OpenInfra Days exceeded expectations by selling out in two weeks and influx of sponsoring offers until one week before the event. Broadening the focus on open infrastructure, the event attracted 300 people to the morning sessions and 500 people to the afternoon (open) sessions. Attendees represented more than 90 companies including telcos, cloud, and mobile application providers, who have been applying open source technologies to run their cloud infrastructure and seeking to unleash the potential to increase flexibility, efficiency, and ease of management.

VOID 2019 morning session and exhibition booths

Structured around container technologies, automation, and security, the agenda featured 25 sessions, including case studies, demos, and tutorials. In their talks, the speakers—solution architects, software architects and DevOps engineers—shared their experiences and best practices while building and running customers’ (and their own infrastructure) using OpenStack, Kubernetes, CI/CD, etc. Many heated discussions were brought to the breaks and the gala dinner showing immense interest in open infrastructure.

“The event, in general, is a playground for open source developers, particularly in open infrastructure. In addition, through the event we would like to bring real case studies which are happening in the world to Vietnam so that companies in Vietnam who have been applying open source can see the general trend of the world, as well as make them more confident in open source-based product orientation,” said Tuan Huu Luong, one of the founders of OpenInfra User Group Vietnam, in an interview with VTC1, a national broadcaster.

Local news coverage of the Vietnam OpenInfra Days 2019

Though officially being an OSF User Group meetup, the Vietnam OpenInfra Day (VOID) is the largest venue on cloud computing and ICT infrastructure in Vietnam. The second event this year also showed the impact of the Vietnam OpenInfra community in the region with sponsors from Korea, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and half of the speakers from all over the world. Accordingly, the organization team produced a rich program for speakers, sponsors, and attendees.

A warm welcome to speakers and sponsors was organized at the pre-event party in a local brewery, where discussions and opinions on open infrastructure and trends were exchanged. A five star lunch buffet at the event venue, InterContinental Hanoi, provided a pleasant occasion for attendees to meet up and network. Finally, the gala dinner in an authentic Vietnamese restaurant offered a chance to finally close the OpenInfra discussions and introduce the international friends to the Vietnamese food culture, and of course, the noisy drinking culture “Uong Bia Di, 1-2-3 Zooo!” The photo gallery of the event can be found here.

The Vietnam OpenInfra team is impressed and thankful for the attendance in a large number of the OpenInfra Korea User Group despite the unfinished plan to co-organize the event due to short of time. However, a plan for co-organizing Korea OpenInfra Meetup was worked out during the event and Korean attendees were obviously enjoying the event very much.

Korea OpenInfra User Group at the VOID 2019

Last but not least is to mention that the success of the event is owed to the constant support from the OpenStack Foundation (OSF), which was a silver sponsor this year. Especially, the participant of OSF members in organizing OpenStack Upstream Institute training in Hanoi following the main event. Ildiko Vancsa, Kendall Nelson and volunteer trainers from Vietnam and Korea User Group delivered a surprisingly fun and productive training day to a new generation of contributors from Vietnam.

OpenStack Upstream Institute Training Hanoi

Time to say goodbye to VOID 2019. See you again at the next VOID, until then we will celebrate open infrastructure community’s achievements with a series of events starting with the Korea Meetup in October (TBD)!