A technology spin-off of the FP7 Call 1 project RESERVOIR, OpenNebula (http://opennebula.org) started initially as a University of Madrid initiative in 2005 before transforming into the open-source community ‘OpenNebula.org’ two years later. Its many innovative features address the business requirements of leading companies across multiple sectors.
Through a series of EU-funded cloud research projects, OpenNebula has now been enhanced with new functionalities. For example, StratusLab extended the platform to address the needs of supercomputing and grid sites, while 4CaaSt is improving elasticity and quality of service.
Additionally, OpenNebula is being used as reference open stack for cloud computing in several large research and infrastructure projects, such as BonFIRE, EGI or Helix Nebula, which are building pan-European multi-cloud infrastructures.
OpenNebula is a very active open-source project with a large user base: more than 5 000 downloads per month and thousands of deployments, including by industry leaders and leading research and supercomputing centres. Development is driven by its community, which is best placed to determine desirable features, and also by other international research projects.
Crucially, OpenNebula has played an important role in driving and supporting the transition to cloud computing and thus accelerating the pace of innovation in Europe. Many large companies, research centres and public entities are using OpenNebula to cut costs, to improve their existing IT services, or to support new innovative services.
OpenNebula is also an open cloud enabler – it is helping many smaller players in the ICT industry, mainly SMEs, to be cloud active by lowering the barrier to entry and thus enabling companies to build their own cloud. In many cases, paying a licence fee for commercial software is simply not an option, so the choice comes down to open-source cloud or no cloud.
Find out more at the next OpenNebula conference, taking place from 2 to 4 December 2014 in Berlin. Not sure what to expect? Check out the blog on the September edition http://blog.opennebula.org/?p=5268
(Article from net-cloud future magazine (2013) - for complete magazine click here)