The Changing Face of the OpenStack Vendor Market

As with any new area of technology, the OpenStack cloud market has undergone transition with some startup vendors getting acquired and others simply ceasing operations. Since 2010, when NASA and Rackspace first got together to form OpenStack, at least seven vendors have faded from the landscape. Perhaps the biggest collapse in the OpenStack market was the April 2015 demise of Nebula, which was founded by OpenStack founder and former NASA CTO Chris Kemp. Also no longer leading an OpenStack company is Joshua McKenty, who was a co-worker of Kemp at NASA, as Cisco acquired his firm Piston Cloud Computing in June 2015. As the OpenStack Summit kicks off in Boston this week, running from May 8-11, eWEEK takes a look back at some of the OpenStack vendors of years past.

Red Hat acquired OpenStack services vendor eNovance in a $95 million deal in June 2014.

In September 2014, Cisco acquired private OpenStack cloud vendor Metacloud and has since integrated the service into its broader offerings.

CloudScaling was an early leader in the OpenStack movement and was acquired by EMC in October 2014.

OpenStack cloud vendor Nebula was started up by OpenStack founder and former NASA CTO Chris Kemp in March 2011, but ceased operations effective April 1, 2015.

Former NASA staffers Joshua McKenty, Christopher MacGown and Gretchen Curtis founded Piston Cloud after the OpenStack platform was first announced back in 2010. Cisco acquired Piston Cloud in June 2015.

Blue Box was an early leader in providing managed private OpenStack cloud infrastructure. IBM acquired the company in June 2015.

Tesora was the leading vendor behind the OpenStack Trove database-as-a-service project.  Stratoscale acquired Tesora in February 2017.