OpenStack is the full software behind several Cloud Servers and Cloud Files offerings. The software, which will be licensed under Apache 2, will be available to competing hosting companies, enterprises and governments to implement. I will say that it’s hard to beat the credibility of the platform being run by a top five IaaS provider.
Regular hosting companies should be jumping on this because there are strong similarities between your business and Rackspace and thus the solution should be relatively applicable. It’s also potentially more appealing from a profit point of view than Microsoft Windows Azure platform appliance or vCloud as there’s no one you have to share the revenue with. There will no doubt be some skepticism by hosters that Rackspace is holding back something that will help them maintain their advantage.
My prediction is that OpenStack cloud server is that they will be a leader here in the next 6 months!
