Announcing SUSE OpenStack Cloud 8

I’m very excited to be able to announce that the latest version of SUSE OpenStack Cloud, version 8, is now available!

As the first to produce an enterprise-ready distribution of OpenStack back in 2012, as well as the first enterprise-ready Linux distribution in 2000, our open source pedigree is hard to deny. This latest iteration of SUSE OpenStack Cloud builds on this heritage, and introduces new features and functionality that are intended to help businesses to use technologies like Software-Defined Infrastructure, Containers and Software-Defined Networking more easily.

A Converged Code Base

Many will be aware that SUSE acquired HPE OpenStack technology and assets in 2017, and this latest release of SUSE OpenStack Cloud is the first release to see a converged code base shared between SUSE OpenStack Cloud 8 and HPE Helion OpenStack 8. This release brings new functionality to customers of both distros, so watch this space for future blogs from the SUSE OpenStack Cloud team for more information about these changes.

Software-Defined Infrastructure

Software-Defined Infrastructure has become one of the buzz-phrases that has recently captured the attention of the corporate IT world. Just a few years ago, everyone was talking about cloud – public, private, hybrid and multi, but now these are just seen as components in a wider Software-Defined Infrastructure (SDI). The SUSE 2017 Global Cloud Research backs this up – in the 2017 research, 95% of IT decision makers believed that SDI is the future of the data center, whereas just two short years before in 2015, 93% of IT decision makers stated that Infrastructure-as-a-Service was the future of the data center.

SDI can include many components – Software-Defined Storage (SDS), Software-Defined Networking (SDN), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and containers are just some that an enterprise might choose as part of their SDI implementation. All can add huge amounts of value to an organization – giving improved business agility, the ability to react quickly to changes in market conditions and customer demand, as well as the ability to make better use of hardware and software. It also enables businesses to more easily assign and track resources to different parts of the company – with everyone hyper-aware of security concerns, being able to easily segregate resources and data, ensuring full, logical separation to better enable compliance with data security standards is essential to the enterprise of today.

The IT Skills Gap

However, SDI isn’t an easy solution to implement yourself – the SUSE Global Cloud Research also highlighted that 72% of organizations felt that the lack of available skillset in the market generally when moving to cloud is a concern. The individual components are complex, and all need to be governed by an overarching orchestration layer. OpenStack fits this bill very well – with over 84,000 members spread across 179 countries (and counting – these numbers rise every year), and most major technology companies participating in the project, the software is constantly evolving to incorporate the latest technological trends. This interconnects with some of the most popular SDN, SDS and IaaS solutions, enabling it all to be managed through one pane of glass.

Making OpenStack and SDI Easier for Businesses

SUSE OpenStack Cloud makes OpenStack and SDI easier for businesses – with the IT skills gap continuing to grow, enterprises need to be able to focus on growing their bottom line, but cannot do this effectively if they are constantly seeking new skill sets or training their existing staff. SUSE OpenStack Cloud takes away a lot of the stress commonly associated with implementing SDI or private cloud. When combined with SUSE Select Services, companies can jumpstart their private cloud and realize a return on their investment much faster. The fixed-priced, flexible offering that combines consulting, maintenance services and knowledge transfer can really help companies to make their infrastructure fly. Our implementations of SDS using Ceph (SUSE Enterprise Storage) and containers using Kubernetes (SUSE CaaSP Platform) can interoperate easily with SUSE OpenStack Cloud, making it easier for businesses to get started using these technologies and start to see the benefits sooner.

OpenStack Vancouver Summit

We’ll be at the OpenStack Vancouver Summit from 21^st-24^th May as Spotlight Sponsors, and some members of the SUSE team will also be speaking at various points across the Summit on topics as diverse as OpenStack troubleshooting, a performance comparison of containerized vs. VM-based Cloud Foundry, Keystone-federated Swift, debugging Magnum and the OpenStack self-healing Special Interest Group (SIG).

Please come along to our booth (B10) to meet the team, try your luck with our legendary scratch cards to see if you can win one of our much-coveted stuffed chameleons, or even a seaplane tour of Vancouver Harbor, and to learn more about how SUSE OpenStack Cloud 8 can get your private cloud to take off, and your infrastructure fly.