OpenInfra Summit Vancouver 2023: Accomplishments, Opportunities, Threats
The OpenInfra Summit showcased the community’s progress in addressing challenges. However, some key issues still require attention. Kenneth Tan, Executive Director of Sardina Systems, shares his insights.
OpenStack: Expanding Influence and Fostering Collaboration
The OpenInfra community has grown significantly over the last years, with over 10,000 developers in 65 countries and 110,000 community members. OpenStack powers an impressive 40 million CPU cores and has experienced increased demand for open-source infrastructure solutions. This year’s summit brought together over 2,000 IT decision-makers and developers, facilitating collaboration and knowledge sharing through breakout sessions, mentoring, and informal gatherings.
Announcement of New Regional Hubs
The summit marked the announcement of two regional hubs, OpenInfra Europe and OpenInfra Asia. The goal of these hubs is to address local challenges and strengthen the open infrastructure ecosystem globally. In particular, OpenInfra Europe is expected to play a vital role in the debate around the Cyber Resilience Act, proposed in the EU. If successful, the regulation may put Open Source projects development at risk. That is why the creation of the regional hub is so crucial for the community.
The Biggest Challenge for OpenStack
While OpenStack deployment and upgrading were discussed extensively, complexity remains a significant challenge. Red Hat, Canonical, Okestro, Bloomberg, StarlingX, and StackIT showcased their solutions and shared their experiences. However, the solutions still take weeks and months to complete, which has a detrimental impact on OpenStack adoption rates. Amidst the risk of losing ground to big hyperscalers, the need for simple, zero-downtime solutions has never been more critical. Unfortunately, this year’s summit proved unsuccessful in tackling this problem.
Sardina Systems’ Perspective on Overcoming Challenges
Kenneth Tan, Executive Director of Sardina Systems, emphasises that optimal deployment and upgrading solutions already exist. FishOS, for example, which has been proving itself successful for over seven years, allowed Sardina to recently complete an upgrade for Indonesia’s major IT service provider in just five days, including preparation. You can read about the revolutionary approach, here.
As Mr. Tan points out, it is crucial that the community stops its attempts to find the Holy Grail of upgrading and shifts focus on other important issues. Failing to do so puts OpenStack prosperity at risk of losing ground completely to the Big 4 public cloud providers.
Staying True to the Mission
Despite challenges, the OpenInfra Summit Vancouver 2023 was a success. The event showcased the power of community and collaboration in open infrastructure projects by bringing together industry leaders, project teams, and IT professionals. The summit covered various aspects of open-stack infrastructure, including 5G, machine learning, sustainability, private & hybrid cloud architecture, and more. It featured panel discussions, technical sessions, workshops, and presentations.
In conclusion, the OpenInfra Summit Vancouver 2023 celebrated achievements, highlighted challenges, and offered opportunities for growth. It demonstrated the importance of community and collaboration in advancing open infrastructure projects.
