IBM is confirming its lead role in the OpenStack RefStack Project, which was created last year as part of the OpenStack community’s effort to drive interoperability across clouds. The ability to move data and apps from one cloud to another is a major obstacle in the evolution of cloud and business.
IBM, which is the lead contributor to RefStack, said the project is a critical pillar of its commitment to ensuring an open cloud.
The specific upgrades to the upcoming RefStack release include:
- User functionality and usability enhancements to allow easier, more streamlined visibility into test data for OpenStack release compatibility.
- Tempest plug-in enablement to allow users to expand existing test suites to include external test cases.
- Stability enhancements to expand the availability of the RefStack service and support a growing number of RefStack users.
- Additionally, RefStack will soon enable vendor registration, allowing community members to easily correlate test results in RefStack’s central repository with specific OpenStack vendors – ensuring results are more transparent.
“The OpenStack ecosystem is very rich and rapidly evolving, and provides an extremely strong foundation for real interoperability. However, achieving this will require deep, sustained collaboration across the open community,” said Angel Diaz, Vice President of Cloud Architecture and Technology at IBM. “We are ready and willing to work with every single OpenStack cloud provider on this, and are challenging the OpenStack community to collaborate with us. We are determined to provide customers with the flexibility they want – regardless of their provider – so that they have a global platform for business and innovation.”