How NASA Changed The Cloud

The Secret History of OpenStack, the Free Cloud Software That’s Changing Everything, Wired

“OpenStack is software anyone can use to build their own version of Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud, the massively popular web service that gives developers and businesses instant access to virtual servers. The roots of OpenStack stretch back only about four years to a skunk works project inside of NASA, but it has already overturned the status quo in both the private sector and the public. After catching the eye of Vivek Kundra — the country’s first CIO — it’s used not only by NASA but by other operations across the federal government. After it was launched to the rest of the world through an unlikely partnership between the space agency and Rackspace — the Texas outfit that trails only Amazon in the cloud computing game — it’s now backed by over 150 companies worldwide. And it’s shaping the future of such names as HP, Cisco, Dell, and — if the rumors are true — IBM.”