OpenInfra Summit

OpenInfra Summit
Name	OpenInfra Summit
Status	Active
Genre	Technology conference
Frequency	Annual
Location	Rotating global venues
First	2012
Organized	OpenInfra Foundation

OpenInfra Summit The OpenInfra Summit is an annual conference focused on OpenStack-related technologies and broader cloud computing ecosystems, gathering developers, operators, vendors, and users to collaborate on open infrastructure projects. The summit brings together contributors from projects under the OpenInfra Foundation, fostering cross-project integration, interoperability, and operational best practices across platforms like Kubernetes, Ceph, Ansible, Terraform, and Prometheus. Attendees typically include representatives from companies such as Red Hat, IBM, Intel, Cisco Systems, and Huawei, with participation from research institutions like MIT, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, and government labs such as Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Overview

OpenInfra Summit serves as a nexus for collaboration among projects including OpenStack, Kubernetes, Kolla, Zuul, Juju, Ceph, MAAS, Ironic, Trove, Neutron, and Swift. The summit's program typically features keynote presentations, project sessions, developer summits, operator meetups, and vendor expo halls populated by organizations like Canonical, SUSE, VMware, Oracle Corporation, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and Google. Community governance and technical steering discussions often reference standards and tools from bodies such as the Linux Foundation, Apache Software Foundation, Eclipse Foundation, Cloud Native Computing Foundation, and OpenStack Foundation predecessors. Corporate adoption and case studies have included deployments at entities like NASA, European Space Agency, Deutsche Telekom, China Mobile, and Telefonica.

History

The summit originated after collaborative events hosted by early OpenStack communities and foundations, evolving from project-specific conferences to a consolidated gathering under the OpenInfra Foundation umbrella. Early iterations featured pivotal releases and cross-project integrations involving contributors from Rackspace, NASA Ames Research Center, HP, Dell Technologies, Canonical Ltd., and academic partners including Carnegie Mellon University and Georgia Institute of Technology. Over time, the agenda expanded to include container orchestration work from projects influenced by Google and Docker, Inc., storage contributions from Red Hat Ceph Storage initiatives, networking advances tied to Arista Networks and Juniper Networks, and CI/CD pipeline innovations from Jenkins and GitLab. High-profile keynote speakers have historically included executives and technical leads from Mark Shuttleworth, Jim Zemlin, Diane Greene, Mitchell Hashimoto, and researchers affiliated with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Organization and Governance

The summit is organized by the OpenInfra Foundation with program committees composed of technical leads and community representatives from projects such as OpenStack, Ceph, Kubernetes, Ansible, and Zuul. Governance policies reflect contributor license agreements and community norms similar to those used by the Linux Foundation, Apache Software Foundation, and Cloud Native Computing Foundation. Sponsorship tiers attract corporations like Red Hat, Intel Corporation, Cisco Systems, Inc., IBM Corporation, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., and Oracle Corporation, while scholarship and diversity programs have collaborations with organizations like Women Who Code, Black Girls CODE, IEEE, and ACM. Local organizing committees coordinate with municipal authorities and venue partners such as Moscone Center, ExCeL London, and Vancouver Convention Centre for logistics and accessibility.

Events and Programming

Program elements include keynote addresses, technical deep dives, case study sessions, interoperability workshops, and certification training, often featuring demonstrations tied to OpenStack Nova, Neutron, Cinder, Glance, Keystone, and Horizon. The summit offers operator-focused gatherings inspired by events like KubeCon, DockerCon, SREcon, and FOSDEM, and integrative sessions that cross-link projects including Terraform, Vault (HashiCorp), Consul, Prometheus, Grafana Labs, and ELK Stack. Continuous integration and delivery discussions highlight tools such as Zuul CI, Jenkins, Travis CI, and GitHub Actions. Vendor booths and community lounges showcase offerings from SUSE, Canonical, Red Hat, Mirantis, Platform9, StackHPC, Bright Computing, and academic incubators from institutions like ETH Zurich and Imperial College London.

Regional and Satellite Summits

Regional editions and satellite events extend the summit's reach, resembling localized conferences like OpenStack Summit spin-offs and regional meetups in cities such as Tokyo, Beijing, Bangalore, São Paulo, Berlin, Paris, San Francisco, Toronto, and Sydney. Collaborations with regional cloud providers and research centers include NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications), Riken, Tata Consultancy Services, Atos, and CEA. Satellite events often coincide with larger technology gatherings such as KubeCon + CloudNativeCon, Open Source Summit, Cloud Expo, and LinuxCon to maximize cross-community participation.

Impact and Community Contributions

The summit has catalyzed interoperability projects, reference architectures, and operator best practices adopted by enterprises and public-sector institutions, influencing upstream work tracked in repositories hosted on GitHub, Gerrit, and Launchpad. Collaborative outcomes include joint testing frameworks, deployment recipes, and performance benchmarks utilized by organizations like NASA JPL, European Commission research initiatives, CERN, Broad Institute, and national laboratories such as Argonne National Laboratory. Educational and workforce development activities tied to the summit have produced training materials integrated into curricula at universities and bootcamps run by entities like Coursera, edX, Udacity, and Pluralsight. The community's open collaboration model has been cited alongside projects governed by the Apache Software Foundation, Linux Foundation, and Cloud Native Computing Foundation as a driver of open infrastructure adoption across industries.

Category:Technology conferences