How To Make Money With OpenStack

The open source OpenStack cloud effort isn't just about technology, it's also about money - lots and lots of money. Speaking at the OpenStack Summit, venture capitalist Ryan Floyd of Storm Ventures detailed to the capacity crowd why he's putting money into funding OpenStack start-ups.

Floyd noted that his firm was founded in 2000 as an early stage IT venture group. He also candidly admitted that he is very bullish on OpenStack. Storm Ventures has been investing in OpenStack for the last 18 months. The firm currently has invested in OpenStack startups, Metacloud as well as Swiftstack.

"I believe that OpenStack will fundamentally change enterprise IT," Floyd said. "From an investor perspective, it's the sort of disruption that gives entrepreneurs and start-ups the chance to compete with incumbents." OpenStack isn't the only open source cloud effort, though. There is also the Cloudstack effort as well as Eucalyptus. Floyd emphatically noted that he's betting on OpenStack, though he believes that overall the only way to do cloud infrastructure is in open source...