Rackspace and NASA Donate Code for Open Source Cloud Platform

Tom Jowitt | Tech Week Europe | July 19, 2011

Rackspace Hosting this morning has officially launched OpenStack, an open-source cloud platform that it hopes will drive the uptake of cloud apps, prevent vendor lock-in and encourage cloud interoperability.

Currently the second largest provider of cloud hosting services, Rackspace has donated the source code that powers its Cloud Files and Cloud Servers public-cloud offerings to the OpenStack project. NASA is also donating code, and vendors including Citrix and Dell are supporting the project.

Speaking to eWEEK Europe UK, Fabio Torlini, head of Cloud EMEA at Rackspace, said that the announcement is a win for Rackspace and a win for the industry. “At the moment, we have just short of 100,000 cloud customers,” Torlini said. “Essentially, we have three cloud products, the first of which is Cloud Files, which is a cloud storage platform that already has 1 petabyte of data...