OpenStack in Today’s World: How Organizations Harness its Power

In this blog:

• Common Use Cases for OpenStack
• Real World Examples of OpenStack Usage
• Benefits of OpenStack
• Hosted OpenStack Advantages

OpenStack is the most popular open source cloud computing platform, but this comes as little surprise to the open source community. OpenStack is a versatile and powerful platform that can cater to varying needs of organizations.

Unlike proprietary cloud that were developed with specific use cases in mind, OpenStack has been developed by many teams, each with their own unique needs. This resulted in a very robust product that can be applied to many use cases. OpenStack can be used to set up Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS).

This blog will explore how organizations are leveraging OpenStack in real-world scenarios, highlighting its benefits and showcasing the impact it has in today’s business environment.

Common Use Cases for OpenStack

Web Hosting

OpenStack’s unique capabilities in scalability and reliability make it the ideal platform for organizations to deliver exceptional online experiences to their users.

Scalability is a crucial aspect of web hosting, as websites and web applications often experience varying levels of traffic. With OpenStack, businesses can easily scale their hosting infrastructure to meet increasing demands.

The platform’s robust architecture and fault-tolerant design ensure that websites and web applications remain up and running. This minimizes any potential downtime.

Whether you’re a small business owner starting a new website or a large enterprise managing multiple web applications, OpenStack provides the robust foundation to deliver seamless online experiences to users. By harnessing the power of OpenStack, businesses can ensure their websites and web applications perform optimally, building a strong online presence and satisfying their users’ expectations.

Big Data Analytics

OpenStack offers a cost-effective and scalable solution for organizations looking to leverage big data analytics. With OpenStack, businesses can efficiently store and process vast amounts of data, enabling valuable insights and informed decision-making.

Its cost-effectiveness eliminates the need for expensive proprietary software licenses, optimizing budget allocation.

The scalability of OpenStack allows businesses to seamlessly handle increasing data volumes and complex analytics workloads.

Additionally, OpenStack’s compatibility with various analytics tools and robust security features ensure data integrity and privacy.

By harnessing the power of OpenStack, organizations can unlock the full potential of their data, gaining a competitive advantage in today’s data-driven world.

DevOps Initiatives

DevOps initiatives demand a cloud platform that offers flexibility and agility to enable swift application deployment and management. OpenStack precisely fulfills these requirements, empowering development and operations teams to collaborate effectively, streamline workflows, and expedite application delivery to the market.

With OpenStack, organizations can seamlessly embrace DevOps practices, ensuring an efficient development process. The robust capabilities of OpenStack enable teams to achieve optimal productivity, scalability, and automation, thereby promoting a culture of continuous integration and delivery.

By leveraging OpenStack’s versatile features, businesses can enhance their DevOps initiatives, fostering collaboration, innovation, and accelerated software delivery.

Diverse Cloud Environments

OpenStack software provides organizations with the flexibility to build a wide range of cloud environments, including public, private, hybrid, and alternative clouds. By leveraging OpenStack, businesses can create hybrid cloud architectures that combine the advantages of public and private clouds.

This strategic approach allows for the utilization of public cloud resources when necessary, while retaining crucial control over sensitive data and applications within a secure private cloud infrastructure. OpenStack’s versatility and robust capabilities make it an optimal choice for organizations aiming to optimize their cloud strategy by leveraging diverse deployment models.

Within the realm of alternative cloud solutions, OpenMetal has introduced an innovative offering that blends the benefits of public and private clouds seamlessly. On-Demand OpenStack by OpenMetal empowers organizations to access cloud resources on demand, effortlessly scale their infrastructure to meet evolving needs, and maintain comprehensive control over their cloud’s configurations and security.

With predictable billing and the removal of hardware management complexities, On-Demand OpenStack presents an alluring proposition for businesses seeking a highly flexible, efficient, and scalable cloud computing experience.

Real-World Examples of OpenStack Usage

Walmart

Walmart relies on OpenStack as its cloud computing infrastructure solution. OpenStack provides Walmart with a scalable, reliable, and cost-effective way to run its various applications, including e-commerce, supply chain management, and point-of-sale systems.

By leveraging OpenStack, Walmart has experienced enhanced application performance, improved reliability, and heightened security measures, all while achieving cost savings in its cloud computing operations.

Overall, Walmart’s successful utilization of OpenStack highlights the platform’s versatility, agility, and ability to drive significant benefits for businesses.

PayPal

PayPal relies on OpenStack to power its global infrastructure, benefiting from its scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness. By leveraging OpenStack for various workloads, including web applications, API services, and security, PayPal has improved agility, reliability, and security.

OpenStack’s ability to meet diverse infrastructure requirements has helped optimize PayPal’s business operations. With increased agility, improved reliability, enhanced security, and cost-effectiveness, OpenStack proves to be a valuable cloud infrastructure solution for organizations seeking scalability and efficiency.

Benefits of OpenStack

Open Source

OpenStack’s open-source nature eliminates licensing costs and promotes collaborative development. The software is openly available to the public allowing the open source community to develop solutions to problems they encounter on their cloud journey. This results in an ever-growing abundance of tools and resources available to improve your OpenStack experience.

Because OpenStack and most of the tools developed for it are all open source, it’s a cost-effective solution for organizations of all sizes, enabling them to allocate resources more efficiently.

Scalability

OpenStack’s inherent scalability ensures organizations can seamlessly adjust their cloud infrastructure to meet changing demands. With hosted OpenStack solutions, organizations can scale up during periods of increased workload or scaling down to optimize costs.

With on-premise private OpenStack you can also scale your individual clouds up and down and optimize use of resources; but it doesn’t necessarily reduce your cost because you already paid for the hardware whether you are using it or not.

Flexibility

The platform’s versatility empowers organizations to tailor their cloud infrastructure to specific needs, delivering optimal performance and efficiency.

As mentioned before under open source, the contributions of the community have made OpenStack so versatile, it allows organizations to power a wide range of workloads, accommodating diverse application requirements.

Community Support

OpenStack boasts a vibrant and active community of users and developers. This support network offers valuable resources, knowledge sharing, and troubleshooting assistance, facilitating smoother deployments and ongoing maintenance of OpenStack environments. The active community ensures that glitches and bugs are quickly detected and resolved.

Hosted OpenStack Advantage

While OpenStack itself offers a multitude of benefits, organizations may consider using an OpenStack provider like OpenMetal to benefit from the advantages of OpenStack while avoiding the cons (high hardware costs and complicated setups).

OpenMetal stands out among OpenStack providers for several key reasons:

Focus on Performance

OpenMetal prioritizes high-performance OpenStack deployments by utilizing top-tier hardware, implementing a well-designed infrastructure, and continuously optimizing their solutions. OpenMetal ensures that businesses can achieve optimal performance and efficiency from their OpenStack environments. This dedication to performance is essential for organizations with demanding workloads or stringent performance requirements.

Security

OpenMetal customers have root level access to the entire cloud. This means they have the ability to configure their cloud in any manner they deem necessary to safeguard their workloads. Organizations get total control of their cloud’s security and do not need to rely on their vendor.

Wide Range of Workload Support

OpenMetal cloud cores support a diverse range of workloads on OpenStack, catering to various industries and use cases. Whether organizations require a platform for web applications, big data analytics, machine learning, or any other workload, OpenMetal’s OpenStack deployments can accommodate these needs effectively. This versatility allows businesses to leverage OpenStack for multiple projects and ensures compatibility with their existing infrastructure.

Flexible Pricing Options

OpenMetal understands that different organizations have unique budgetary requirements. To cater to these diverse needs, OpenMetal offers flexible pricing options, including pay-as-you-go, subscription-based, and custom pricing models. This flexibility enables organizations to align their cloud expenditure with their operational and financial goals, optimizing cost-efficiency.

Conclusion

In today’s world, where cloud computing has become a cornerstone of digital transformation, OpenStack stands out as a powerful and adaptable platform. Organizations across various sectors, from telecommunications giants to technology leaders, have embraced OpenStack to power their critical infrastructure and enable innovation.

With its open-source nature, scalability, flexibility, and robust community support, OpenStack offers numerous advantages. Organizations can leverage OpenStack to host web applications, perform big data analytics, support DevOps initiatives, and create hybrid cloud environments.

By harnessing the power of OpenStack, organizations can propel their digital transformation journeys, unlock new possibilities, and achieve greater agility and success in the dynamic world of cloud computing.

Ready to Try OpenStack?

If you want to better understand how On-Demand OpenStack meets your organization’s needs, we can help. Schedule a consultation with our cloud team to learn more. It’s a no-pressure, complimentary discussion to understand your challenges and goals, review your current cloud bills, and identify any opportunities to reduce your spend. Take control of your cloud and reclaim capital that you can use to fund new growth, rather than continuing to overpay large public cloud providers.