Today’s announcement of a new OpenStack consortium, led by Rackspace and NASA, could help the cloud  computing movement quickly overcome user concerns regarding vendor lock-in by establishing a open-source platform to encourage industry standards for cloud interoperability.

While there will always be cynicism and debate about the feasibility of creating industry-wide technology standards, this initiative appears to have ‘legs’ for a number of reasons,

• The initiative promotes the use of generally accepted Open Source stack technologies and approaches which are already popular in the cloud computing industry,
• The strength and diversity of the ‘charter’ members of the OpenStack consortium represents a powerful group of technology vendors, service providers and enterprise users.

Although vendor/service provider deployment of the OpenStack code and technology may still vary based on the proprietary interpretations of the standards by specific companies, this initiative will still have a positive impact on the overall growth of the cloud computing movement by alleviating some of the anxiety and apprehension which many potential users feel about potential lock-in.

By capitalizing on the broader acceptance of the Open Source idea and solutions, the OpenStack consortium should receive a positive response from a growing array of IT and business decision-makers interested in leveraging cloud computing to achieve their corporate objectives.

cloud computing NASA Open Source OpenStack Rackspace