Karine DilanyanCelebrating 15 years of OpenStack and our journey with Atmosphere: driving open cloud innovation, scale, and community impact.
This year marks a significant milestone for the cloud computing industry: 15 years of OpenStack. From its early beginnings as an ambitious open-source experiment, OpenStack has become a trusted foundation for private, hybrid, and edge cloud environments worldwide. Its success reflects the power of open collaboration — and the collective effort of a global community committed to driving cloud innovation forward.
At VEXXHOST, we’re proud to have been part of this journey since 2011, contributing expertise, infrastructure, and meaningful improvements that have helped OpenStack thrive. Today, through Atmosphere OpenStack, we continue to build on that foundation — making OpenStack’s power accessible to modern enterprises with a production-ready, fully integrated cloud platform.
The Journey of OpenStack: A Legacy of Innovation
In 2010, OpenStack began as a visionary collaboration between NASA and Rackspace. What started as a bold experiment to bring open-source principles to cloud infrastructure quickly blossomed into one of the most successful open-source projects in history. Its initial release, codenamed "Austin," introduced two core components: a compute service (Nova) and an object storage service (Swift). These laid the foundation for what would become a modular and extensible platform capable of transforming cloud environments.
Over the years, OpenStack has evolved through the contributions of a vibrant global community. With each release, new capabilities have been introduced—networking with Neutron, image management with Glance, orchestration with Heat, and more. This continuous innovation has enabled OpenStack to remain at the forefront of cloud technology, addressing the needs of developers, operators, and enterprises alike. We are proud to be part of the OpenStack community.
Since 2011, we have been proud contributors to this vibrant community, dedicating resources, expertise, and time to enhance OpenStack's capabilities. From code contributions and bug fixes to driving the adoption of key projects, our involvement has been a testament to our belief in OpenStack’s transformative potential. As active participants in the OpenInfra Foundation, we have also been involved in shaping the direction of OpenStack, ensuring it meets the evolving needs of businesses worldwide.
With our solution – Atmosphere OpenStack, we further exemplify this commitment, building OpenStack’s foundation to refine and integrate its capabilities into a robust cloud platform. By combining OpenStack’s core strengths with modern enhancements, Atmosphere provides businesses with a truly comprehensive cloud experience.
OpenStack's Role in Modern Cloud Computing
OpenStack plays a transformative role in shaping the future of modern cloud computing. Its open-source nature has given organizations unparalleled flexibility to design, deploy, and manage cloud environments tailored to their unique needs. Unlike proprietary platforms, OpenStack provides the freedom to choose hardware, integrate with existing systems, and scale infrastructure without vendor lock-in.
One of OpenStack’s defining strengths is its modular architecture, which allows enterprises to adopt only the components they need. Whether it’s powering private clouds for sensitive workloads, enabling hybrid cloud strategies, or even supporting public cloud services, OpenStack’s versatility has made it a go-to solution for businesses looking to modernize their IT infrastructure.
Atmosphere has taken this flexibility a step further. As a fully integrated OpenStack-based solution, it provides tailored editions to meet diverse business needs. Whether businesses are looking for a public cloud experience, a fully dedicated private cloud environment, or an on-premise deployment, Atmosphere delivers all the power of OpenStack with added simplicity, scalability, and efficiency. With features such as native Kubernetes integration, high-performance block storage, and advanced networking capabilities, Atmosphere has become the ideal choice for organizations seeking a seamless, production-ready OpenStack deployment.
Empowering the Future with OpenStack and Atmosphere
The power of OpenStack lies not just in its features but in its ability to adapt to changing trends and requirements. As the industry shifts toward edge computing, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, OpenStack has continued to evolve, offering robust solutions that address these demands. Its compatibility with GPU instances, multi-architecture support, and integration with advanced storage and networking technologies make it an ideal platform for today’s data-intensive workloads.
Our work reflects that same evolution. In the early years, we invested heavily in projects like OpenStack-Ansible, helping automate and simplify complex OpenStack deployments. Building on that experience, we reached a major milestone with the launch of Atmosphere in 2022 — transforming our deep OpenStack expertise into a comprehensive, production-ready cloud platform.
Atmosphere builds on this adaptability by providing a fully optimized and integrated OpenStack experience. Its Kubernetes service, powered by OpenStack Magnum and enhanced with advanced Cluster API drivers, allows organizations to deploy and manage CNCF-certified Kubernetes clusters effortlessly. From auto-healing to rolling upgrades, Atmosphere ensures Kubernetes environments are as resilient and scalable as the underlying OpenStack platform. This seamless integration between Kubernetes and OpenStack empowers businesses to innovate faster, whether they’re deploying containerized applications, AI/ML workloads, or edge computing solutions.
Furthermore, Atmosphere enhances OpenStack’s storage and networking capabilities to meet the needs of modern enterprises. With high-performance block storage powered by Ceph, full support for distributed networking through OVN, and advanced network offloading features like SR-IOV and DPDK, Atmosphere provides a cloud infrastructure that is built for speed, reliability, and scalability. These features make it an invaluable solution for organizations handling complex workloads or requiring robust multi-cloud strategies.
As long-time contributors to OpenStack, we have worked on numerous initiatives to improve its functionality and make it more accessible to a broader audience. This includes our work on key projects such as Magnum, which powers Kubernetes integration, and contributions to storage, compute, and networking services.
Alongside our technology, we also offer tailored professional services — from deployment and migration support to performance optimization, security hardening, and long-term operational management — helping organizations get the most out of their OpenStack environments. Our deep involvement ensures that Atmosphere users benefit from the latest advancements in OpenStack, delivered in a production-ready, enterprise-grade solution.
Why OpenStack and Atmosphere Matter: A Community-Driven Success
At the heart of OpenStack’s success is its community. Thousands of developers, contributors, and organizations from around the globe have come together to build, improve, and maintain the platform. This collective effort has not only driven OpenStack’s technical advancements but also fostered a culture of collaboration and inclusivity.
Since joining the OpenStack community in its early days, we have actively participated in its growth—whether through speaking at OpenStack Summits, sponsoring events, being infrastructure donors to the foundation, or contributing code and operational expertise. We are proud to have been 3x nominee for OpenStack SuperUser award and won it in 2019 at OpenStack Denver Summit. This dedication has allowed us to stay at the forefront of OpenStack’s evolution and deliver cutting-edge solutions like Atmosphere that embody the platform’s potential.
Atmosphere is a testament to the community’s vision, taking the core principles of OpenStack—openness, scalability, and flexibility—and packaging them into a solution that is accessible to organizations of all sizes. By delivering a production-ready OpenStack experience across public, private, and on-premise environments, Atmosphere ensures that the benefits of open source are within reach for businesses everywhere.
Another milestone for us has been MigrateKit, our tool that simplifies moving workloads into OpenStack environments. It reflects our commitment to solving real-world challenges, helping organizations modernize without the friction and cost that come with typical migrations.
This alignment with OpenStack’s community-driven ethos has also allowed Atmosphere to continuously evolve alongside the platform. As OpenStack grows and adapts to emerging technologies, Atmosphere ensures these innovations are immediately available to users through a seamless and fully supported offering.
Looking Ahead: The Next 15 Years of OpenStack and Atmosphere
As OpenStack celebrates 15 years, its future remains full of possibility. From the growth of edge and decentralized computing to the increasing importance of AI and sustainability, the next decade will demand flexible, scalable cloud solutions — and OpenStack is well positioned to meet that demand.
Atmosphere builds on this foundation, making OpenStack practical and production-ready for organizations tackling complex workloads. Its support for distributed infrastructure, GPUs, multi-architecture environments, and advanced storage ensures our clients are ready for data-intensive use cases, real-time processing, and sustainable operations.
By bridging OpenStack’s open-source power with managed services and enterprise-grade support, Atmosphere enables businesses to focus on innovation rather than infrastructure complexity — helping them stay agile, efficient, and ready for what’s next.
Conclusion
OpenStack’s 15th anniversary is more than just a milestone — it shows what’s possible when a global community works together, shares ideas openly, and builds something that lasts. From its early days as a bold open-source experiment to becoming a backbone for cloud infrastructure everywhere, OpenStack has helped countless organizations build, scale, and innovate on their own terms.
We’re proud to have played a part in that journey for more than a decade — and through Atmosphere, we’re making sure businesses can keep unlocking the best of what OpenStack has to offer, without the complexity holding them back.
Looking ahead, we’re excited to keep moving this mission forward — helping organizations stay flexible, efficient, and ready for whatever comes next in the cloud. Interested in starting your OpenStack journey? Contact us today!