OpenStack is a cloud operating system that controls large pools of compute, storage, and networking resources throughout a datacenter. It is all managed through a dashboard that gives administrators control while empowering their users to provision resources through a web interface. OpenStack is a global collaboration of developers and cloud computing technologists producing the ubiquitous open source cloud computing platform for public and private clouds. The project aims to deliver solutions for all types of clouds by being simple to implement massively scalable feature rich. To check out more information on OpenStack visit http://goo.gl/Ye9DFT OpenStack Foundation: The OpenStack Foundation, established September 2012, is an independent body providing shared resources to help achieve the OpenStack Mission by protecting, empowering, and promoting OpenStack software and the community around it. This includes users, developers and the entire ecosystem. For more information visit http://goo.gl/3uvmNX. Who's behind OpenStack? Founded by Rackspace Hosting and NASA, OpenStack has grown to be a global software community of developers collaborating on a standard and massively scalable open source cloud operating system. The OpenStack Foundation promotes the development, distribution and adoption of the OpenStack cloud operating system. As the independent home for OpenStack, the Foundation has already attracted more than 7,000 individual members from 100 countries and 850 different organizations. It has also secured more than $10 million in funding and is ready to fulfill the OpenStack mission of becoming the ubiquitous cloud computing platform. Checkout http://goo.gl/BZHJKdfor more on the same.

The goal of the OpenStack Foundation is to serve developers, users, and the entire ecosystem by providing a set of shared resources to grow the footprint of public and private OpenStack clouds, enable technology vendors targeting the platform and assist developers in producing the best cloud software in the industry. Who uses OpenStack? Corporations, service providers, VARS, SMBs, researchers, and global data centers looking to deploy large-scale cloud deployments for private or public clouds leveraging the support and resulting technology of a global open source community. This is just three years into OpenStack, it's new, it's yet to mature and has immense possibilities. How do I say that? All these ‘buzz words’ will fall into a properly solved jigsaw puzzle as you go through this article. It's Open Source: All of the code for OpenStack is freely available under the Apache 2.0 license. Anyone can run it, build on it, or submit changes back to the project. This open development model is one of the best ways to foster badly-needed cloud standards, remove the fear of proprietary lock-in for cloud customers, and create a large ecosystem that spans cloud providers. Who it's for: Enterprises, service providers, government and academic institutions with physical hardware that would like to build a public or private cloud. How it's being used today: Organizations like CERN, Cisco WebEx, DreamHost, eBay, The Gap, HP, MercadoLibre, NASA, PayPal, Rackspace and University of Melbourne have deployed OpenStack clouds to achieve control, business agility and cost savings without the licensing fees and terms of proprietary software. For complete user stories visit http://goo.gl/aF4lsL, this should give you a good idea about the importance of OpenStack.