OpenStack Silicon Valley 2014: Towards Software-Defined, Agile-Driven, DevOps-Dominated Everything
On September 16, 2014, we’re debuting a new community conference, hosted by Mirantis on behalf of the OpenStack ecosystem: OpenStack Silicon Valley, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California (across the street from NASA, Google, and … Mirantis HQ).
Our aim for this one-day conference is to take an approach that complements – and differs from – the Spring and Autumn OpenStack Summits it falls between. Where the Design Summits focus on OpenStack itself – specifics of the next iteration and what everyone is announcing around the current one – the focus of OpenStackSV is to get more provocative with a look ahead. We’re off to a good kickstart with open source infrastructure and cloud fueling the software defined economy; we want to see how and where we, as a community, can kick harder.
That’s a lot to cover in one day, so we’ve set up keynotes and fireside chats in the morning, followed by four more tightly-focused afternoon tracks and a little ol’ partying in the evening. Since this is in the heart of Silicon Valley, let’s call these The Four Megathemes:
Networking: Making sense of the explosion of SDN activity around Neutron to facilitate scale-up and empower creation of functional hybrid clouds, as well the emergence of higher-order abstractions like NFV that potentially make SDN more workable, and are table-stakes for OpenStack acceptance in lucrative large-scale service provider and cloud platform markets.
Agile methodology, continuous integration and automated deployment: These are the new guiding principles for consuming OpenStack (whether from trunk or as expressed in distributions), and as a new approach for empowering DevOps-dominated enterprise IT everywhere.
Emerging OpenStack trends: Building on the above, along with new service models, tools and methods for OpenStack delivery, creating ways of broadening infrastructure product compatibility, Docker containers, OpenStack on OpenStack (TripleO), and other movements that will soon likely dominate the go-forward dialogue.
Training: Since you are what you know, we’ll also offer an afternoon-long bootcamp on OpenStack architecture, both in the abstract, and in production reference architectures, to keep the conversation grounded in technology, not just adjectives.
OpenStack Silicon Valley keynotes will also address these megathemes, with featured speakers such as Jonathan Bryce, Executive Director of the OpenStack Foundation; Canonical Founder, Mark Shuttleworth; and Martin Casado, VMware’s CTO of Networking (and Nicira co-founder). Finally (how could we not), Randy Bias, CEO and co-founder of Cloudscaling, will offer a no-holds-barred reality check on enterprise OpenStack requirements, subtitled “How to detect who’s kidding themselves.”
Attendees at OpenStack Silicon Valley are likely to come away having learned a lot, and to have had preconceived notions, received wisdom, and OpenStack-bandwagon rhetoric pretty-well blown away. Think OpenStack is here to re-arrange the deck chairs for the enterprise? Well, actually, we’re thinking we’re going to need a bigger boat.
Registration opens today, with early bird pricing of $300. Sponsors already on board will be announced shortly, with additional sponsorships available.