OpenStack Hosting
Cloud computing is becoming more well-known these days, giving rise to the cloud hosting company. It provides cheap web space hosting, keeping more profit in the small businessman's pocket, over the large web hosting providers.
The true question weighing on the minds of the traditional hosting companies: will cloud hosting take over, making traditional hosting methods obsolete? Probably not, but it is a frightening possibility. As with all segments of the technology world, things change rapidly and businesses must change along with them in order to remain competitive.
OpenStack
How does a hosting company offer cloud-based cheap web space hosting more easily? Enter OpenStack, the open source software that helps take care of the IaaS details and controls resources for suitable distribution. It helps websites continue to run despite the number of visitors it sees, putting an end to dreaded downtime due to excess web traffic.
OpenStack was created by Rack-space Hosting and NASA in July 2010, and has grown its number of supporters and developer partners significantly since then. What big names are a part of OpenStack? How about Intel, VMware, HP, AMD, and IBM, a little over 150 companies in all, all over the world.
There are numerous technologies working together to manage storage, processing power, and other resources that are accessed and manipulated through a web interface by administrators and users. The functions and controls vary by account type. OpenStack's mission: bring a “simple to implement and massively scalable” cloud solution to any size public or private business through its open source platform.
Who Can Use OpenStack?
It's really limitless. Service providers, VARS, researchers, SMBs, corporations, and data centers can all find usefulness in the OpenStack platform. Private or public cloud, it doesn't matter. Ideally, you would be deploying large-scale using your own hardware, or you are a company whose data cannot be stored publicly.
As long as you have an IT team that knows their stuff, or a hosting provider for that matter, you're good to go. It is highly technical, and the code used is not part of any hardware or OS.
OpenStack Hosting
It's a safe bet that if you are a small business, you aren't quite ready to bring this to your company just yet. With the technical knowledge you need to keep it running, you probably wouldn't know where to begin.
However, it's something that hosting providers should be all over. OpenStack deployment will be interoperable and hosting providers linked to one another, meaning that the cloud infrastructure one hosting provider is using might be used by another at some point when the demand increases.
This is a big deal, and will likely bring cloud computing to places it never existed before. Think about it: there are big corporations locked in contracts with large telecommunications companies that they are perfectly happy with, companies they place a large amount of trust in to host their data. If those large telecommunications companies were to start offering cloud services, they would be more apt to try it out as they are trusted.
Large corporations with their own experienced IT department and hosting providers will likely find tremendous value in OpenStack infrastructure. Have you considered choosing a cheap web space hosting company because they rely on OpenStack infrastructure? Are you a hosting company looking to deploy an OpenStack infrastructure yourself?
*Photo courtesy of “Victor Habbick” via FreeDigitalPhotos
