The CloudStack Collaboration Conference 2023 is only a few weeks away. This year’s event will be taking place in Paris and online, on 23-24th November. Registration is still open, with free tickets to anybody interested in the open-source project or cloud technology. The event’s agenda has also been released, which you can see when registering for the event.
I decided to interview the project’s current VP, Rohit Yadav, to get his thoughts on the annual event.
Why should individuals and organisations in the cloud industry be excited to attend CloudStack Collab 2023?
“I think the conference gives a great opportunity to everyone in the community, be it an individual, a small and midsize business, or an enterprise, to participate, collaborate, learn about what is coming in CloudStack and to meet and network with people.
CloudStack Conferences and events provide a neutral space for the community to come together, interact and learn about ongoing and future development of the project, influence the direction of the project and form potential partnership with one-another to support their objectives. This can also ensure long-term stability of the contributor base, participation and health of the project.
The benefit of a hybrid event is those who aren't able to attend the conference in person can still participate online, and watch the video streams or the recordings later on.
It can also benefit people looking to learn about reducing cloud costs. It is not a new thing that companies around the world are under financial pressure. We have seen through various scenarios in the past, that moving from VMware to CloudStack, or moving away from Hyperscalers to CloudStack can significantly reduce the cost of ownership. So, the conference and its videos can help a lot of people who are considering CloudStack, as well as those already implementing it.”
Are there any specific talks that stand out to you and that you are most looking forward to?
“There are certainly several talks that I am really excited about – these are new features in Apache CloudStack, use-cases of CloudStack, as well as sessions from thought leaders who are going to talk about their perspective on CloudStack and open-source. So, I am particularly excited about these talks.”
Can you give a sneak peek into your ‘State of the Union’ talk?
“One of the things I did was look at what previous VPs spoke about in their State of the Union talks. So, there will be content about the community, changes since last years, updates about releases and reflecting on what happened in the community, in the last year.
I will also look into trends in the community, whether that is from the mailing lists or from GitHub, as well as discuss new initiatives in the community. I'm still figuring out a theme to stitch the content that I already have and I am reaching out to people and organisations for quotes in support of CloudStack.”
How do you feel the CloudStack community has evolved in recent years?
“Just like the project itself, the community has matured a lot alongside it. We have over a decade of CloudStack releases, making it a stable and mature product. A lot of people have been with the project since the early days and they have a stable and mature outlook on using CloudStack
A term that can be applied here is mechanical sympathy, which can explain how and why some people can become more intuitive than others when it comes to the open-source software. As a result, CloudStack becomes an extension of somebody who understands it better, as they will know its limitations, thus meaning they know where to push it and where not to push it.”
How does the CloudStack Collaboration Conference contribute to fostering collaboration among the CloudStack community members?
“There are a lot of users/vendors who have their idea of where CloudStack could be extended and used. One of the great perks of CCC is that it gives networking opportunities, where people can discuss their ideas, roadmaps and align with others on where they want to see CloudStack go.
We have seen in the past where multiple parties have come together to push CloudStack in a direction with respect to a feature or their roadmap or business strategy.”
Do you believe that open-source technologies will become more prevalent among MSP’s and enterprises? If so, why?
“Yes, I believe so. Any open-source project would have a community around it and that it is easy to get access its the source code, modify and redistribute it. What that unlocks is that for the same software, there might be multiple vendors, which means there is not a vendor lock-in and therefore the total cost of ownership is lower.
Open-source also fosters innovation, as every MSP or enterprise will have their own roadmap and things they want to do with the software. Achieving these objectives will require changes in the software, which is possible because they’re not dependent on a vendor, meaning they can do it themselves or they can partner with other parties in the relevant open-source ecosystem to achieve their goals.”