OpenStack Demos at Equinix Will Traverse Clouds

Three industry heavyweights are teaming to provide a boost to the OpenStack cloud computing platform. Dell and Equinix said today that they will team with OpenStack backer Rackspace Hosting to offer demonstration environments for the OpenStack platform in major data centers.

The demo sites will expose OpenStack to several major data centers packed with marquee customers, who will have the ability to test drive apps and track how cloud assets move between data centers in different regions using the OpenStack platform. The demos will be available in Equinix International Business Exchange data centers in Ashburn, Virginia and San Jose, California, along with a Rackspace data center near Chicago. The companies plan to collaborate on additional demo environments in Equinix data centers in Europe and Asia in the second quarter of 2011.

Key Connectivity Hubs

The Equinix hubs in Ashburn and San Jose are among the Internet's most important intersections for traffic and networks. As a result, the tenants in these centers are among the largest players in the Internet and business worlds, including many network operators and software as a service (SaaS) providers. The OpenStack demo sites will offer these companies a convenient way to test-drive the open source platform and assess its capabilities.

OpenStack is a collection of open-source technologies delivering a scalable cloud platform for public and private clouds. Originally founded by Rackspace and NASA, OpenStack has grown to be a global software community of developers, technologists, researchers and more than 50 organizations collaborating to help enable any organization to create and offer cloud computing services running on standard hardware.

"OpenStack provides an open, standard platform that gives organizations the choice of how and where to deploy a cloud, as well as the flexibility to move applications and workloads among different clouds," said Jim Curry, general manager, Rackspace Cloud Builders. "The collaboration of Dell, Equinix and Rackspace to help organizations deploy and connect OpenStack clouds enables CIOs to choose a computing environment that aligns with their business, regulatory and technical requirements."

“Today's cloud solutions require scalability and reliability and must deliver superior end-user performance,” said Vince DiMemmo, general manager, Global Cloud and IT Services, at Equinix. "The combination of the OpenStack platform on Dell hardware delivered through Equinix data centers excels on all three fronts."

This video provides an overview of the demo environments and their capabilities.

To learn more about the collaboration between Equinix, Dell and Rackspace, visit Rackspace Cloud Builders, Dell or Equinix.