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The State of the Open Source Cloud
2014
Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ... 2
THE STATE OF THE OPEN SOURCE CLOUD 2014 SURVEY ... 4
VIRTUALIZATION AND THE HYPERVISOR BATTLE ... 4
CLOUD ADOPTION AND DEPLOYMENT ... 5
Cloud Adoption...5
Reasons for Not Using the Cloud ...5
Cloud Deployment Models — Public, Private, and Hybrid ...6
Open Source Cloud Adoption ...7
Reasons for Not Using Open Source Clouds...7
INSIGHTS FROM CURRENT OPEN SOURCE CLOUD USERS ... 8
Reasons for Using Open Source Clouds (Current Users) ...8
Open Source Cloud Platforms (Current Users) ...9
Private Cloud Infrastructure Provisioning (Current Users) ...10
Private Clouds and Converged (Integrated) Infrastructure (Current Users) ...11
Private Cloud Vendor Standardization (Current Users) ...11
Primary Open Source Cloud Use Cases (Current Users) ...12
Open Source Cloud Value (Current Users) ...12
Monitoring Open Source Clouds (Current Users) ...13
Satisfaction with Open Source Cloud Investment (Current Users) ...13
Overall Satisfaction with Open Source Clouds (Current Users) ...14
Thoughts About Their Experience with the Open Source Cloud (Current Users) ...14
INSIGHTS FROM PROSPECTIVE OPEN SOURCE CLOUD USERS ... 15
Future Plans for Open Source Cloud Deployment (Prospective Users) ...15
Timeframe for Open Source Cloud Deployment (Prospective Users) ...16
Open Source Cloud Deployment Platform (Prospective Users) ...16
Open Source Cloud Infrastructure (Prospective Users) ... 17
Open Source Cloud Expected Benefits (Prospective Users) ...18
Monitoring Open Source Clouds (Prospective Users) ...19
VOICES OF EXPERIENCE: ADVICE FROM CURRENT OPEN SOURCE CLOUD USERS ... 20
FINAL WORD ... 20
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Executive Summary
In the fall of 2014, Zenoss conducted its second State of the Open Source Cloud survey. This survey was a follow up from the 2012 State of the Open Source Cloud survey Zenoss conducted in the fall of 2012.
The 2014 survey was designed to provide additional insight into how the open source cloud market has evolved over the last two years. Findings are based on 376 responses from across the world, from both large and small organizations across a variety of different industries.
The 2014 State of the Open Source Cloud survey provides the following insights:
VMware vSphere continues to be the hypervisor of choice, but Microsoft Hyper-V is making inroads
• With a 76% adoption rate, VMware continues to dominate the hypervisor market.
• Microsoft Hyper-V is beginning to surge, securing second place with a 29% adoption rate (up from 20% in 2012). Linux KVM (24%, up from 23% in 2012) and Citrix XenServer (21%, up from 15% in 2012) round out the top four.
Cloud adoption continues to grow, but challenges still exist
• 69% of the respondents are using a cloud, and 43% of these respondents are using an open source cloud.
• Open source cloud adoption is growing – 30% of the respondents are currently using an open source cloud in 2012, up from 17.2%, in 2012 resulting in a 72% growth rate.
• Security (42%), lack of in-house specialized skills (39%), lack of support (36%), and maturity (28%) were cited as the top four reasons for not choosing an open source cloud solution.
Early adopters of the open source cloud provide interesting insight into the future
• OpenStack dominates the market, with a 69% adoption rate.
• CloudStack appears to be losing ground, and the future of Eucalyptus is somewhat uncertain due to its recent acqui-sition by HP.
• Converged infrastructure, led by Dell Active Systems, IBM PureSystem, and NetApp FlexPod, provided underlying cloud infrastructure at a third of the organizations who responded.
• The top three benefits delivered by the open source cloud are lower cost of ownership (75%), agility (74%), and faster time to value for applications (54%).
• Key reasons for open source cloud adoption included flexibility (70.5%), no vendor lock-in (66.1%), savings (66.1%), and open standards and APIs (59.8%) — very similar to what we saw in our 2012 survey.
• Satisfaction with clouds continues to grow; 77% reported being satisfied (up from 71% in the 2012 survey), while only 5% were dissatisfied with their cloud (down from 7% in the 2012 survey).
Thoughts from organizations considering/deploying open source clouds
• The top three benefits expected from open source cloud deployments included lower cost of ownership (71.1%), agility (55.6%), and better uptime (46.7%).
• Over 86% are considering OpenStack as the platform for their cloud offering, followed by CloudStack at 43.9%. OpenNebula and Eucalyptus were tied for third at 19.7%.
• 41% of organizations surveyed who are considering an open source cloud plan on buying a unified monitoring tool to monitor their cloud services. Only 8% of current users have taken this step.
About Zenoss, Inc.
Zenoss is a leading provider of unified monitoring and analytics software for physical, virtual, and cloud-based IT infrastructures. Over 35,000 organizations worldwide have deployed Zenoss to manage their networks, servers, virtual devices, storage, and cloud infrastructure, gaining visibility and control of their IT operations. Customers include Alior Bank, Hosting.com, Huntington, NWN Corporation, Rackspace, SAIC, SunGard, Telstra, VMware, the US Army, and the US Air Force.
Methodology
Zenoss provides industry news, commentary, operational best practices, and insights to a community of IT profession-als 100,000-strong. This community was polled in the fall of 2014 about their current status regarding open source cloud adoption. Organizations that had already adopted open source cloud were asked about their experiences to date. Those considering an open source cloud were asked about their plans. Organizations that expressed no interest in open source cloud provided feedback on why it was not a good fit for their organization.
Survey Sample
376 IT professionals participated in the survey, including 257 who are currently using a cloud and 112 who are currently using an open source cloud. Just over 31% of respondents represented organizations with 1-100 employees, another 26% represented organizations with 101-1000 employees, 19% represented organizations with 1001-5000 employees, and just over 24% of respondents represented organizations with 5000+ employees. Open participation in the survey was encour-aged using email, the Zenoss blog (blog.zenoss.com), Twitter (@Zenoss), and other social media outlets.
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The State of the Open Source Cloud 2014 Survey
Initially, many IT organizations who wanted to benefit from the agility, flexibility, and on-demand capacity provisioning cloud computing offered began by leveraging offerings from big public clouds providers, including Amazon Web Ser-vices (AWS), Microsoft Azure, VMware vCloud, and others. However, as cloud technologies have matured, many of these organizations are now looking at building their clouds in-house. This means that IT organizations at many companies are now turning to open source cloud platforms such as OpenStack and CloudStack as they begin building out their clouds. These open source cloud platforms offer the promise of lower operating costs, and also address concerns around vendor lock-in.
This study includes insight from organizations that have already deployed open source clouds, as well as insights from organizations that are currently considering the deployment of an open source cloud. IT decision makers should review these findings in order to understand the benefits open source clouds can deliver and the approaches different compa-nies are taking as they adopt new open source cloud technologies. IT teams should review the “Voice of Experience” sec-tion that includes words of advice from IT leaders and practisec-tioners in organizasec-tions currently using open source clouds. Based upon the findings of this report, the adoption of open source cloud platforms is increasing, up 72% from the adop-tion rate reported in our 2012 survey. However, there are still some challenges, including security, which are keeping some organizations away from adoption. Read on to see what insights your organization can glean from the experiences of your peers!
Virtualization and the Hypervisor Battle
The 2014 State of the Open Source Cloud survey shows that for all intents and purposes, the virtualization discussion has essentially ended. With less than 4% of respondents stating they have no virtualization, we can safely say that virtualiza-tion is now universally accepted.
A deeper drill down into the survey responses clearly shows that VMware continues to be the dominant force in the hy-pervisor space, with over 76% of respondents stating they are VMware users. Of note, however, is that Microsoft Hyper-V is beginning to gain serious traction. While Microsoft Hyper-V was ranked at #3 with 19.6% in the 2012 survey, the 2014 survey saw Microsoft Hyper-V surging past Linux KVM to take the #2 spot with 29% adoption. Linux KVM remained steady in 2014 in the 23-24% range, ending up at the #3 spot. Citrix XenServer and Red Hat Enterprise virtualization moved past Xen to round off the top five hypervisors.
FIGURE 1 – VIRTUALIZATION HYPERVISORS CURRENTLY IN USE
Cloud Adoption and Deployment
The State of the Open Source Cloud 2014 survey provides a great deal of insight into the adoption and deployment of clouds across many different types of organizations. This section discusses why organizations are adopting clouds and open source clouds, while others are staying away — at least for now. For those organizations who have adopted open source clouds, this section provides insights regarding their deployment methodology and technology choices, including their choice of cloud platform and infrastructure.
Cloud Adoption
Almost 70% of those surveyed were currently using a cloud, with only 31% of respondents reporting that they were not using a cloud.
FIGURE 2 – CLOUD ADOPTION
Reasons for Not Using the Cloud
Of the almost 30% of respondents who stated they were currently not using a cloud, 56% stated that they planned to in the future. 23% cited security concerns, while another 21% mentioned that their environment was not dynamic enough
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to justify an investment in the cloud. (Respondents could select multiple reasons.) 17% felt handicapped by regulatory compliance. 10% still believe that cloud is an unproven model and have chosen to stay at the sidelines for now, which indicates that some level of skepticism around the viability of clouds still exists.
FIGURE 3 – REASONS FOR NOT USING THE CLOUD
Cloud Deployment Models — Public, Private, and Hybrid
44% of survey respondents reported that they used a private cloud only, and another 45% mentioned using a hybrid cloud. In other words, 89% of the respondents who are using a cloud are using some form of private cloud. Only 11% respondents mentioned the use of public cloud exclusively.
These responses clearly indicate that, despite the very public fight between Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure for public cloud supremacy, the real battle happening within organizations is around the private cloud, which is where open source cloud communities like OpenStack and CloudStack, along with others in the cloud ecosystem, hope to gain significant ground. Of course, with the hybrid deployment model, security concerns will inevitably start to surface. Enterprises will seek consistent security across their cloud deployment, which in these cases will be a mix of on-premise and in the cloud. Cloud providers will need to match the strong encryption standards for data both in transit and at rest and somehow still manage to comply with regulations such as the Patriot Act. It will be interesting to see how organizations address secu-rity concerns without impacting the economic model of the cloud.
FIGURE 4 – CLOUD DEPLOYMENT MODEL
Open Source Cloud Adoption
Back in our 2012 State of the Open Source Cloud survey, we noted that the intention to deploy open source clouds lagged behind their actual deployment.
In 2012, only 17.2% of the respondents were using an open source cloud, although many reported that they would look at deploying open source clouds in 2013-2014.
Interestingly enough, based on the results from our 2014 survey, many respondents have indeed started to head down the path towards open source cloud adoption. Per the 2014 survey, just under 30% of respondents are now using an open source cloud. This represents a significant 72% growth over the 2012 numbers.
FIGURE 5 – OPEN SOURCE CLOUD ADOPTION RATES FIGURE 6 – 2012 VS 2014 OPEN SOURCE CLOUD ADOPTION
Reasons for Not Using Open Source Clouds
Before we delve into why and how organizations are using open source clouds, let’s first take a moment to look at why 70% of respondents are still shying away from open source clouds.
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Security, lack of in-house specialized skills, lack of support, and maturity were cited as the top four reasons for staying away from open source clouds.
Security concerns rose from number three in 2012 to number one in 2014, and lack of in-house specialized skills has also come to the forefront, underlining the perceived complexity of these platforms. All of these are valid concerns that will need to be addressed in order to ensure the continued success of open source cloud initiatives. With the large invest-ments being made to the OpenStack project by vendors such as HP, IBM, and Dell, it will be interesting to watch how open source clouds continue to evolve and address issues in these problem areas.
FIGURE 7 – REASONS FOR NOT USING OPEN SOURCE CLOUDS
Insights from Current Open Source Cloud Users
Responses from current open source cloud users provide insight into how decisions and adoption patterns have changed between 2012 and 2014. This section covers the motivations and drivers for current open source cloud users, their infrastructure choices and preferred vendors, and how they are monitoring their clouds. This section also covers the use cases and the benefits current open source cloud users are getting out of their clouds and how satisfied they are with their cloud deployments. Finally, this section includes real-life user experiences (both positive and negative) in terms of deploying and using open source clouds.
Reasons for Using Open Source Clouds (Current Users)
Flexibility, open standards, and avoiding vendor lock-in continued to be listed as the key drivers to the adoption of open source clouds in 2014. Portability was once again in the last place. This seems to indicate that while respondents do want open standards, they are not demanding that open source cloud providers set industry standards that can be adhered to by all providers, which would simplify deployment and interoperability. It will be interesting to see if or how this changes over time.
FIGURE 8 – REASONS FOR USING OPEN SOURCE CLOUDS
Open Source Cloud Platforms (Current Users)
OpenStack, the open source cloud leader in the 2012 survey, continues to consolidate its leadership position among current open source cloud leaders. In fact, OpenStack actually increased its lead over its competitors between 2012 and 2014.
OpenStack now accounts for 69% of the total deployments. CloudStack has slipped into a distant second, down to 14% in 2014 from its 18% showing in 2012. Eucalyptus, which had a good showing in the 2012 survey at 9%, slipped down to 3% in 2014, and with its recent acquisition by HP, its continued existence continues to be a question mark.
In the “Other” category, respondents listed names including Helion, Open VZ, Cloud Foundry, Proximox VE, and some homegrown platforms.
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FIGURE 9 – OPEN SOURCE CLOUD PLATFORMS (CURRENT USERS)
Private Cloud Infrastructure Provisioning (Current Users)
For organizations that had already deployed private clouds, the 2014 survey explored how these private cloud users were provisioning their private cloud infrastructure.
Just over 36% of respondents said that they had built their private clouds using best-of-breed infrastructure from vari-ous vendors. Just over 32% were using converged (integrated) infrastructure for their private cloud, while 17% chose to reuse existing hardware (a value proposition for private clouds). 13% procured the necessary infrastructure from a single vendor.
Private Clouds and Converged (Integrated) Infrastructure (Current Users)
Organizations that chose the converged (integrated) infrastructure approach for the underlying infrastructure for their private clouds picked Dell Active Systems, IBM PureSystem, and NetApp FlexPod more often than others. This might be an opportunity for vendors such as VCE and HP to start focusing on this area.
FIGURE 11 - PRIVATE CLOUDS AND CONVERGED (INTEGRATED) INFRASTRUCTURE (CURRENT USERS)
Private Cloud Vendor Standardization (Current Users)
13.6% of the respondents using a private cloud said that they standardized on a single vendor for their infrastructure. Of these, 33% went with HP, followed by Dell with 20%. Of note was that Cisco, a relative newcomer in the server market, has already caught up with IBM/Lenovo and Fujitsu to share the number three position. The Cisco UCS-based systems clearly seem to be helping Cisco build its clout in the private cloud infrastructure business.
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Primary Open Source Cloud Use Cases (Current Users)
Infrastructure as a Service continues to be the leading use case for open source clouds, followed by SaaS and PaaS. FIGURE 13 – PRIMARY OPEN SOURCE CLOUD USE CASES (CURRENT USERS)
Open Source Cloud Value (Current Users)
The open source cloud appears to be delivering on its key promises of lowered cost of ownership and agility, with each of these items selected by nearly 75% of respondents. However, open source clouds seem to continue to lag in terms of de-livering improved customer satisfaction, which only 45% of respondents picked as one of the benefits they receive from their open source clouds. This may be directly related to IT’s inability to deliver better uptime. And as we will see in an upcoming section, while organizations have upgraded their IT delivery mechanism with open source clouds, their cloud monitoring and management strategy continues to lag.
Monitoring Open Source Clouds (Current Users)
The question “How are you monitoring the services running on the cloud” revealed something alarming – 79% of the respondents said they used multiple monitoring tools for their open source cloud monitoring.
However, studies have repeatedly shown that using too many tools to monitor your environment can be counter-pro-ductive and can lead to inefficiencies. (For more information, see “Monitoring IT Business Services: How Too Many Tools Can Impact Your IT Operational Efficiency”.) This is likely one of the biggest reasons organizations are failing to deliver better uptime through their clouds. Addressing this one area can significantly improve cloud service quality and reduce IT operational costs.
FIGURE 15 – MONITORING OPEN SOURCE CLOUDS (CURRENT USERS)
Satisfaction with Open Source Cloud Investment (Current Users)
Organizations using open source clouds appear to be quite happy with their investment, with an average score of 4.11 on a 5 point scale, where 5 is very satisfied. This is up from the score of 3.88 that was recorded in the 2012 survey.
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FIGURE 16 – SATISFACTION WITH OPEN SOURCE CLOUD INVESTMENT
Overall Satisfaction with Open Source Clouds (Current Users)
42% reported being very satisfied with their open source cloud, and another 35% stated that they were somewhat satis-fied with their cloud. These numbers compare favorably to those from the 2012 survey, where 27% had reported being very satisfied and 44.5% had reported being somewhat satisfied. Only 5% said they were somewhat dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with their cloud in 2014, an improvement from the 7% reported in the 2012 survey.
FIGURE 17 – OVERALL SATISFACTION WITH OPEN SOURCE CLOUD (CURRENT USERS)
Thoughts About Their Experience with the Open Source Cloud (Current Users)
When asked about their experience with the Open Source cloud, survey respondents had several good things to say: • “Promoting the innovation of our entire organization.” Database Administrator, North America
• “Ability to personalize.” Database Administrator, North America
• “Is a high quality brand.” “It is just super.” Systems Administrator, Europe or Russia • “Very happy with the solution.” IT Manager/Director, North America
• “It’s been solid; we are not yet automating deployments.” Technical Marketing, North America
• “Completely unique and different.” Database Administrator, North America • “Fast, reliable.” Developer/Software Engineer, Europe or Russia
• “It is very stable and robust.” CIO/Upper Management, Australia or South East Asia • “Easy with no problems so far.” Network Engineer, North America
• “My customers are happy using my cloud services and they are rock steady in term of reliability.” CIO/Upper Manage-ment, Australia or South East Asia
• “It works well once past implementation and compatibility issues.” IT Manager/Director, North America • “It has the quality of service we were looking for.” Network Engineer, Central America or South America • “It works.” Systems Administrator, North America
• “The flexibility of products/configuration is very good.” Database Administrator, Central or South America • “Availability is upwards of 99%.” CIO/Upper Management, North America
• “It is economical but efficient.” CIO/Upper Management, CIO/Upper Management, North America • “Fast connection data.” System Architect, Australia/South East Asia
However, they also mentioned some challenges:
• “OpenStack, while free, can be difficult to implement effectively.” Infrastructure Engineer, North America
• “Too immature, lack of cohesive syntax and semantic for management tools and APIs, competing standards.” IT Man-ager/Director, North America
• “Customer support service is not that good.” Systems Architect, Middle East
• “Open source is more work, requiring specialist knowledge/engineering.” CIO/Upper management, North America • “OpenStack is not mature.” CIO/Upper Management, Middle East
• “It is still evolving.” CIO/Upper Management, North America
• “Software does not have full functionality.” IT Manager, Director, Service Provider, Multi-national • “Features still lacking.” Consultant, Australia/SE Asia
Insights from Prospective Open Source Cloud Users
With an eye to the future of open source cloud adoption, we asked prospective open source cloud users for some infor-mation regarding their future deployment plans. A small number of respondents within this group already had deploy-ments underway, and many more expected to have an open source cloud rolled out within the next year or two. This section provides insight into prospective cloud users, including why they are jumping into the fray, how they are approaching their deployment, the technology choices they are making, and the benefits they hope to realize from their cloud deployment.
In addition, as an added bonus for prospective open source cloud users, the “Voices of Experience” section towards the end of this document provides recommendations from experienced users that organizations on the path towards open source cloud deployment will find useful.
Future Plans for Open Source Cloud Deployment (Prospective Users)
Of the organizations that did not currently have an open source cloud, 48% said they planned on having one in the fu-ture. This is actually down from the 2012 survey, where 57% of the respondents had indicated an interest in deploying an open source cloud.
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FIGURE 18 – FUTURE PLANS FOR OPEN SOURCE CLOUD DEPLOYMENT (PROSPECTIVE USERS)
Timeframe for Open Source Cloud Deployment (Prospective Users)
At 13% of the organizations surveyed with plans to deploy an open source cloud in the future, open source cloud deploy-ment is already under way, and another 53% expect to deploy an open source cloud within the next 1-2 years.
FIGURE 19 – TIMEFRAME FOR FUTURE OPEN SOURCE CLOUD DEPLOYMENT (PROSPECTIVE USERS)
Open Source Cloud Deployment Platform (Prospective Users)
For organizations still in the planning stages of their open source cloud deployment, OpenStack ranks at the top of the list at 86.4%, a large jump from 63.2% in the 2012 survey. CloudStack comes in a distant second with 43.9%, slightly down from its 47% showing in 2012. Eucalyptus, in third place with 23.5% in the 2012 survey, has slipped and is now tied with OpenNebula for the third place, both coming in at 19.7%. As Eucalyptus was recently acquired by HP, its future direction remains to be seen.
FIGURE 20 – OPEN SOURCE CLOUD DEPLOYMENT PLATFORM (PROSPECTIVE USERS)
Open Source Cloud Infrastructure (Prospective Users)
40.6% of organizations that are considering open source clouds appear to be committed to the use of best of breed com-ponents from different vendors. While this is consistent with the path the early adopters took, these organizations don’t seem to be paying enough attention to converged infrastructure/integrated infrastructure offerings. Since slightly over 23% are committing to a single vendor solution, it is likely that some of these organizations will actually move towards adopting converged infrastructure for simplicity and speed as their deployments begin.
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Primary Open Source Cloud Use Cases (Prospective Users)
While the PaaS and the SaaS use cases for prospective open source cloud users are in line with findings from the current open source cloud users, organizations considering a cloud are not as focused on Infrastructure as a Service. Only 48.9% of prospective users expect IaaS to be their use case, compared to 72% of the current user who picked IaaS.
FIGURE 22 – OPEN SOURCE CLOUD USE CASES (PROSPECTIVE USERS)
Open Source Cloud Expected Benefits (Prospective Users)
While 71% of respondents expect their open source clouds to lower their total cost of ownership, only 56% expect better agility. However, the responses from the current open source cloud users indicate that 74% are experiencing better agility with their cloud; prospective users are in for a very pleasant surprise as they roll out their clouds.
However, it is somewhat disturbing to note that less than half of survey respondents expect their open source cloud to improve uptime, with only 46.7% responding that they expect better uptime once their cloud is rolled out. This seems to indicate that there is a lot of room for improvement. With appropriate monitoring and management, organizations can quickly improve the infrastructure reliability and experience a significant uptick in their availability numbers. This could also be instrumental in improving overall customer satisfaction numbers.
FIGURE 23 – OPEN SOURCE CLOUD EXPECTED BENEFITS (PROSPECTIVE USERS)
Monitoring Open Source Clouds (Prospective Users)
There has been a huge change in philosophy in terms of the approach to monitoring the open source cloud between 2012 and 2014.
Unlike existing open source cloud users, who were early adopters and cobbled together a plethora of existing monitoring tools to monitor their cloud services, organizations who are considering or just beginning their cloud deployments are taking a more strategic view.
41% of organizations responding to the survey in 2014 are planning on purchasing a unified monitoring tool to monitor their cloud services. This is a huge jump from the existing 8% of survey respondents who are currently using a unified monitoring tool to monitor their cloud services, and this approach will likely be a strong contributor towards improving uptime and customer satisfaction with open source cloud deployments.
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Voices of Experience: Advice from Current Open Source Cloud Users
Finally, some insight and words of wisdom from current open source cloud users:
• “Make sure you know why you are on this path and put your monitoring in place for live deployments and ops.” CIO/Up-per Management, North America
• “Don´t underestimate the need for education.” Network Engineer, Europe or Russia
• “Consider using a (third party) vendor to smooth out bumps in the road.” Infrastructure Engineer, North America • “Take your time and do it right the first time!” CIO/Upper Management, North America
• “Research it, and get started. The value is there, you just need to determine for which part of your business.” IT Manager/ Director, North America
• “Identify the use cases, skill sets, and business needs.” Project Manager, Europe or Russia • “Read the docs well prior to installing.” CIO/Upper Management, North America
• “Don’t build it yourself - use a Cloud provider.” CIO/Upper Management, North America • “Talk to your peers.” Systems Administrator, Europe or Russia
• “Test, test, test, go slowly, be wary and cautious in your evaluation for ThereBeDragons!” Technologist, North America • “Have faith on open source technologies, rather on depending on proprietary standardized solutions.” Systems
Admin-istrator, Multi National
• “Join OW2 and exchange knowledge and best practices with the community.” Project Management, Europe or Russia • “Research!” Network Engineer, North America
• “Have a sense of urgency...while being patient.” CIO/Upper Management, North America • “Try them before committing, really try them.” Systems Architect, North America
• “Research and test multiple strategies with existing infrastructure.” IT Manager/Director, North America • “Build a lab and be prepared for much trial and error.” CIO/Upper Management, North America
• “Balance developing in-house solutions with purchasing the tools and interfaces from established vendors.” Systems Architect, North America
• “Preparation!” IT Manager/Director, Multi-National
• “Mix of open source and vendor specific is the way to go.” Systems Architect, Multi-National
• “Have a strong long term view of what you want it to evolve into.” Systems Architect, North America • “Define what you want to deliver at the start.” IT Manager/Director, North America
• “Research and talk to existing customers.” CIO/Upper Management, Multi-National
• “Conduct a proof of concept, start small, then gradually expand.” CIO/Upper Management, North America • “OpenStack isn’t as difficult as it’s made out to be.” Technical Marketing, North America
• “Make sure a complete site survey is done.” Systems Administrator, North America • “Plan, plan, plan.” IT Manager/Director, North America
• “Do your homework.” IT Manager/Director, North America
• “Understand if the organization wants to run a complex cloud management platform first, or outsource it to an MSP.”
Consultant, Australia or South East Asia
• “Go for it!” CIO/Upper Management, Australia or South East Asia
Final Word
The state of the open source cloud in 2014 seems very positive overall, and the future of open source clouds appears bright. Organizations adopting open source cloud platforms are getting real benefits, including lowered cost of
owner-ship, better agility, and faster time to value for their applications. Open source clouds are addressing the concerns with vendor lock-in expressed by many organizations. Organizations that are rapidly adopting converged (integrated) infra-structure to support their clouds are also getting to their desired state faster and with fewer hiccups.
However, organizations continue to overlook the importance of unified monitoring in open source cloud environments. Only 8% of the current users have adopted a unified solution for cloud monitoring. The rest continue to cobble together multiple tools. This is a major oversight, and is causing more than half of IT organizations to not be able to deliver better uptime with their clouds. This is something that can be addressed quickly and will extract greater value from clouds. As one of the respondents very eloquently put it, “Make sure you know why you are on this path and put your monitoring in place for live deployments and ops.” - CIO/Upper Management, North America
Without a doubt, challenges remain, including security and complexity. These are real and need to be addressed. However, with huge investments being made by large vendors, including Dell, HP, IBM, etc., we believe many of these challenges will be addressed, and the open source cloud will continue on its path to becoming the de-facto standard for private clouds in the not-to-distant future.
We hope this report has been as informative to you and your staff as it has been to the team here at Zenoss!
Demographics of Survey Respondents
Organizations of all sizes were well represented in the 2014 State of the Open Source Cloud survey, with 57% of the re-sponses coming from companies with 1,000 employees or less and 43% rere-sponses from those with over 1,000 employees.
FIGURE 25 – ORGANIZATION SIZE
As was the case in the 2012 survey, the highest number of respondents identified themselves as members of the “tech-nology” industry. However, in a departure from 2012 survey, where “tech“tech-nology” represented 40% of the total respon-dents, in 2012, technology represented only of 28% of the respondents. This seems to reflect the growing mainstream acceptance of the cloud and across the board interest in deploying cloud technologies.
In addition to the industries shown below, there were some write in responses under the “Other” category, including logistics, transportation, consulting, media etc.
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FIGURE 26 – INDUSTRY
While 67% of respondents were from North America, enough responses were received from other parts of the world to provide insight into how cloud adoption is progressing globally.
FIGURE 27 – GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION
In the 2012 State of the Open Source Cloud survey, System Administrator was by far the most prevalent job role (40%). However, in 2014, survey respondents came from a much broader group of people. While System Administrator still had a strong showing in 2014, at 20% or respondents, IT Manager/Director represented 24% of respondents. In the Other category, respondents listed roles such as Project Manager, Systems Engineer, Tech Support, Business Analyst, Security Analyst, Consultant, and perhaps one of the most interesting ones – “All the Above”.
These results seem to indicate that the cloud and its staffing continues to evolve. However, we believe that there will be much more clarity in the role definitions by time our next open source cloud survey rolls around.
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