Introducing OpenStack — an open source cloud platform

July 18, 2010

Today Rackspace and NASA announced OpenStack, an open source cloud platform that they are collaborating on and building a community around.  Last week the inaugural OpenStack design summit was held here in Austin with 20 companies from around the world, including Dell, participating.

During one of the breaks I grabbed sometime with Rackspace’s cloud president, Lew Moorman to learn more about the effort and get his thoughts:

Some of the topics Lew tackles:

  • What is OpenStack (an opensource set of technologies for building clouds…)
  • Why Rackspace decided to opensource their code .
  • How Rackspace got hooked up with NASA and what each brings to the party.
  • Taking Nebula’s core foundation and adding some elements from Rackspace’s side in order to put together a release candidate that should be available to the community this Fall.

Extra-credit reading:

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

Lew Moorman and Robert Scoble of Rackspace

April 6, 2009

Last week Rackspace announced the appointment of Lew Moorman as president of Rackspace’s Cloud Computing Efforts.  As luck would have it, Lew was attending Web 2.0 and I was able to grab a few minutes of his time to shoot a video.  Not only that but as added bonus, recent Rackspace conscript Robert Scoble joined the conversation as well.

To watch in High Quality: after clicking play, click the “HQ” button that will appear on the bottom.

Some of the topics Lew and Robert tackle:

  • What does it mean to be president of Rackspace’s computing efforts?
  • What’s “building 43” about and what is Robert’s mission at Rackspace?
  • How did Rackspace decide on hiring Robert and Rocky?
  • Rackspace added to the NASDAQ index (even though they trade on the NYSE)
  • Robert asks Lew about Slicehost and Rackspace’s plans there.
  • Lew out at Web 2.0 meeting with a lot of developers and looking to help them sell their tools to Rackspace customers.

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

The Cloud — Looking back at ’08 and forward to ’09: Taking with Rackspace’s Head of Strategy

January 7, 2009

I first met Lew Moorman, Rackspace’s Chief strategy officer, at Rackspace’s big Cloud Event back in October.  It was at this event that Rackspace, through acquisitions as well their friendly annexation of  Mosso, positioned itself as a major cloud player.

I caught up with Lew during the slow time over the holidays and we chatted about his thoughts and predictions for Cloud Computing.

lewmoorman

Lew, a self-portrait (lifted from his twitter page)

Take a listen:

>> My talk with Lew (13:18): Listen (mp3) Listen (ogg)

Some of the Topics we tackle:

  • The reason cloud computing is getting all the attention it is is because it represents the paradigm shift of consuming IT as a service.
  • The cloud is all about consuming your IT over the web, on the WAN as opposed to the LAN, from a centralized provider and you don’t have a concept of the assets that are being used to deliver that IT.
  • How the recessionary environment is helping to speed along the adoption of the cloud.
  • How Rackspace plays in all three areas of cloud computing: Infrastructure as a Service (storage and compute power are the cornerstones), Platform as Service (the ability to deploy code on ready-made platform) and Applications as a Service (aka SAAS).
  • Is “Internal Cloud” an oxymoron?
  • Which type of players are likely to be the winners in this space.

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

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