Dana CazacuFuture-proof your cloud with Atmosphere: scalable, open-source OpenStack, real-time insights, and full control without vendor lock-in or complexity.
Cloud infrastructure promised freedom and efficiency, and yet for many organizations, it’s also introduced new forms of dependency and cost uncertainty. Vendor lock-in, scalability limits, operational inefficiencies, and unpredictable pricing models have become common challenges that quietly erode flexibility and control over time.
According to McKinsey’s Making the Cloud Pay report, companies estimate that around 30% of their cloud spend is wasted, and that most organizations exceed their cloud budgets by an average of 23%. These figures highlight a growing disconnect between the promise of the cloud and its real-world execution, especially when businesses lack visibility and control over their infrastructure.
OpenStack offers a clear alternative. As an open-source, vendor-neutral cloud platform, it gives businesses full control over their environments, from architecture and deployment to scalability and cost transparency.
Atmosphere enhances OpenStack with advanced tooling, smarter resource management, and optimizations built on years of experience running OpenStack at scale. It bridges the gap between raw open-source capabilities and enterprise-ready reliability, ensuring businesses can not only mitigate long-term risks but also future-proof their cloud infrastructure.
§ Avoiding Vendor Lock-In
Vendor lock-in is one of the biggest hidden risks in cloud computing. Once you commit to a proprietary platform, it’s surprisingly easy to get stuck in that ecosystem. You end up tied to its pricing, tools, roadmap, and even its business decisions. And while everything might run smoothly at first, over time flexibility fades, costs climb, and innovation slows down.
That’s where OpenStack makes a real difference. Because it’s open-source and vendor-neutral, you’re never locked into one provider’s ecosystem. You decide where and how your workloads run, and you can adapt as your needs evolve — without being tied to someone else’s pricing model or product roadmap. It’s flexibility by design, giving you full ownership and control over your cloud infrastructure.
Atmosphere builds on OpenStack’s foundation with technical enhancements that ensure long-term independence and adaptability. It allows seamless integration with a wide range of technologies, from diverse storage backends to advanced networking configurations. Its modular architecture ensures that businesses can scale or evolve their cloud environments without being locked into a single provider’s tools or pricing model. With Atmosphere, organizations gain the freedom to innovate, migrate workloads, and future-proof their cloud operations without compromising on performance or control.
§ Scalability Without Restrictions
Scalability is one of the cornerstones of cloud infrastructure, but proprietary platforms often impose hidden limitations or escalating costs as businesses grow. These restrictions can bottleneck performance, inflate budgets, and make it harder to adapt to changing workloads. OpenStack addresses these challenges with its modular architecture, allowing businesses to independently scale compute, storage, and networking resources as needed. This ensures that organizations can grow their infrastructure without unnecessary constraints or costs.
How OpenStack Solves Scalability Challenges
- Modular Design
Each OpenStack component (e.g., Nova for compute, Neutron for networking, and Cinder for storage) operates independently, enabling targeted scaling to match business demands. - Interoperability
OpenStack integrates seamlessly with diverse hardware and software ecosystems, ensuring businesses can add resources without compatibility concerns. - Cost Control
Being open-source, OpenStack eliminates licensing fees, enabling organizations to scale without hidden cost increases.
How Atmosphere Enhances Scalability
Atmosphere takes OpenStack’s scalability a step further, optimizing its architecture for real-world growth scenarios. Key enhancements include:
- Kubernetes-Driven Control Plane
Atmosphere uses Kubernetes to manage and scale OpenStack’s control plane dynamically, ensuring that services remain responsive even during peak demand. - Scalable Storage with Ceph
Atmosphere integrates Ceph to provide high-performance, scalable storage that grows linearly with additional nodes, reducing storage bottlenecks. - Optimized for Modern Architectures
Compiled forx86_64-v2, Atmosphere unlocks better CPU efficiency and performance, making it ideal for high-demand workloads. - Networking Flexibility
With support for OVN’s distributed networking and advanced configurations like SR-IOV, Atmosphere ensures scalable, high-performance connectivity.
Key Benefits
- Scale compute, storage, and networking independently to meet workload demands.
- Maintain predictable costs without paying premiums for higher usage tiers.
- Leverage modern tools like Kubernetes and Ceph for effortless, production-ready scaling.
With Atmosphere, businesses can scale their cloud infrastructure smoothly, efficiently, and without restrictions, ensuring they stay ahead of their growth curve.
If you want to learn more about scalability and why it is a non-negotiable feature for a cloud infrastructure, we encourage you to read this post.
§ Future-Proofing Through Open Standards
OpenStack’s open-source nature enables continuous development from a global community, ensuring compatibility with the latest technologies, such as Kubernetes, edge computing, and AI/ML workloads. Its modular architecture allows organizations to adopt new components or features without disrupting their existing infrastructure, creating a seamless path for growth and innovation. Furthermore, its adherence to open standards guarantees interoperability with a wide range of tools, reducing the risk of future compatibility issues.
Atmosphere builds on this foundation with enhancements designed for real-world operations. By integrating CNCF-certified Kubernetes, Atmosphere enables businesses to deploy containerized workloads alongside traditional virtual machines, creating a unified environment for modern applications. Its decoupling of critical components, such as Open vSwitch (OVS), from the core OpenStack lifecycle ensures upgrades are smooth and disruption-free, even as infrastructure evolves. Additionally, Atmosphere’s optimizations for modern hardware, like x86_64-v2, prepare businesses to leverage the latest advancements in performance and efficiency.
§ Transparency and Customization
Many proprietary cloud platforms operate as “black box” systems, offering little to no visibility into their operations. This lack of transparency makes troubleshooting difficult, limits customization, and forces businesses to rely heavily on vendors for updates, fixes, and integrations. Without access to critical configurations, logs, or processes, organizations lose the ability to proactively manage their infrastructure, making them less agile and more dependent on external support.
OpenStack, by contrast, is built on open-source principles that prioritize transparency and control. Its fully open codebase allows businesses to inspect, audit, and customize every component of their cloud environment. With its modular design, OpenStack enables organizations to tailor their infrastructure to specific needs, whether optimizing compute resources, customizing networking configurations, or integrating with specialized storage backends. Additionally, OpenStack provides full access to logs and configurations, empowering teams to troubleshoot issues and make adjustments independently, reducing downtime and operational bottlenecks.
Atmosphere enhances OpenStack’s transparency with practical tools and features designed for real-world usability. Instead of simply offering open access, Atmosphere simplifies complex operations while still keeping the platform fully customizable. It provides advanced usage reporting and real-time insights, giving businesses a complete understanding of their resource consumption across compute, storage, and networking. This visibility allows teams to make informed decisions, optimize workloads, and reduce inefficiencies. If you want to learn more about this topic, we encourage you to read this blog post Monitoring an Openstack Cloud: Tools, Metrics and Alert Fatigue.
Atmosphere also bridges the gap between simplicity and control. Its pre-configured tools streamline deployment and management, enabling businesses to get started quickly without compromising their ability to modify and adapt the platform as needed. For organizations with compliance, performance, or industry-specific requirements.
Atmosphere offers tailored private cloud options in its Hosted and On-Premise editions, ensuring environments can be customized to meet exact specifications. Whether it’s seamless integration with advanced networking (OVN, SR-IOV) or support for diverse storage backends like Ceph, Pure Storage etc., Atmosphere ensures businesses maintain control without operational complexity.
§ Cost Predictability and Control
Unpredictable costs remain a top concern for businesses using cloud platforms, especially proprietary solutions with hidden fees, licensing costs, and complex pricing models. These costs can escalate quickly as organizations scale their infrastructure or adopt new features, creating long-term financial risks. OpenStack mitigates these challenges by being fully open-source, eliminating licensing fees, and allowing businesses to focus solely on the infrastructure they consume. This transparency in pricing ensures cost predictability, making OpenStack an ideal choice for organizations aiming to control their cloud expenditures.
Atmosphere enhances cost control by integrating advanced usage reporting and billing features. Its millisecond-accurate tracking ensures that organizations only pay for the resources they use. With tools that help identify over-provisioned or underutilized resources, Atmosphere enables businesses to fine-tune their infrastructure and reduce waste.
§ Enhanced Security and Compliance
Security risks and compliance challenges are significant concerns for organizations operating in cloud environments. Proprietary systems often restrict visibility into security practices, forcing businesses to trust the vendor’s ability to address vulnerabilities. OpenStack mitigates these risks by offering full access to its source code, enabling businesses to audit, customize, and enhance security measures to meet their specific needs. Built-in features like encryption at rest and in transit, along with key management services, ensure robust data protection. OpenStack’s flexibility also allows organizations to tailor their environments to comply with industry regulations, making it a reliable solution for sectors like healthcare, finance, and government.
Atmosphere builds on OpenStack’s security foundation by incorporating advanced features that further reduce risks. For example, Atmosphere include support for LDAP, SAML, and OpenID integrations, ensuring secure identity management for enterprise environments. Additionally, Atmosphere provides tools for encryption key rotation and secure storage of TLS certificates, enhancing protection for critical workloads. Whether businesses need to meet stringent compliance standards or safeguard sensitive data, Atmosphere ensures that security and operational reliability go hand in hand.
Conclusion
n a rapidly evolving cloud landscape, businesses need a platform that not only meets their current needs but also prepares them for future challenges. OpenStack’s open-source, modular architecture provides the foundation for a flexible, scalable, and transparent cloud environment, addressing long-term risks like vendor lock-in, scalability limitations, and operational inefficiencies. However, running OpenStack at scale requires more than just access to its open-source capabilities; it demands a production-grade solution tailored for real-world operations.
This is where Atmosphere shines. By building on OpenStack’s strengths, Atmosphere delivers advanced tooling, enhanced usability, and optimizations that make OpenStack deployment and management seamless.
Whether it’s enabling seamless workload migrations, integrating Kubernetes for modern workloads, or optimizing infrastructure for performance and cost efficiency, Atmosphere ensures that businesses can focus on innovation and growth without worrying about their cloud infrastructure. By choosing Atmosphere, organizations gain a future-proof platform that aligns with their strategic goals, combining the freedom of OpenStack with the reliability of a production-hardened solution.
If you’d like to bring Atmosphere into your organization with the help of our team of experts, reach out to our sales team today!