Rackspace Private Cloud VP Igoe Talks OpenStack, Future of Cloud

Cloud services provider (CSP) and OpenStack promoter Rackspace (RAX) hired a new vice president of private cloud in late April 2013, tapping John Igoe, former executive director of cloud and big data solutions in the Dell (DELL) Datacenter Solutions group. In his new role at Rackspace Igoe leads business development, partner alliances and technology initiatives for bringing Openstack solutions to market. What’s Igoe’s vision for Rackspace in the channel? We’ll reveal the details in this Talkin’ Cloud exclusive.

Twenty-five year industry veteran Igoe has worked with more than ten different start ups. He has this to say about Rackspace: It’s the “largest startup” he’s ever encountered in the industry. Describing the company to family and peers he uses words like “decision, speed, execution, and agility.”

“You come to work every day with a vibrant sense of energy and a vibrant sense of focus,” he said. “The company is still driving toward the set of core values that founded the company. I think that’s exactly what you find in start-up culture.”

Hybrid computing is no longer on the whiteboard

Igoe said there has been a paradigm shift in the way corporate IT executives are thinking. “Cost, efficiency, and agility” have been key words in corporate boardrooms.

“In addition to that, there have been technology drivers,” he said. “These technology drivers are things such as cloud computing, big data and open source. I think when you combine these attributes into a single offer and make that offer available to the community of end users that are looking for a way to compete in their market, it becomes a very, very attractive proposition for them.”

Greater availability of technology and services is driving this paradigm shift. Hybrid computing, for instance, is no longer a concept on a whiteboard. Companies are already leveraging this technology.

IT executives understand cloud and security concepts, but not continous integration and DevOps

Igoe said executives are past the stage of understanding cloud and security concepts — they get it. They don’t, however, understand continuous integration and DevOps.

“Explain to me your vision of how my legacy environment transitions to the next generation environment in a way that makes the most sense,” he explained.

Businesses are asking about the location of critical business applications. Which applications belong in which environments?

OpenStack adoption has been phenomenal

Igoe said OpenStack has come a long way. He spoke of the early days of working with OpenStack, and how he used to be the one doing presentations, explaining the concept.

“The community itself is making the transition we would expect them to make at this stage,” he said. “We are moving from a development organization to a development and an end-user focused organization.”

Now, he said, those businesses that attended his presentations are the ones explaining their story in front of more than 500 people.

“It’s a very disruptive technology, a very agile technology, and now it’s demonstrating that it’s a production quality piece of technology.”

Rackspace’s vision for the channel

Igoe said his vision is simple: “Rackspace is going to be the service leader in terms of fanatical support for the industry in a worldwide basis around cloud solutions based on open-source technology.”

He added that OpenStack will be a key part of the vision, but other open source technology will play a role, too.

License technology will still be available to partners with license technology, and Rackspace will continue to provide that to the market place. However, the company is also working on an offering with service providers to assist them deliver Rackspace capabilities through their own offerings.

“Service wrapped around cloud attributed architecture,” he said. “That’s the capability that Rackspace is bringing to the market.”

During his time at Dell, Ignoe worked to define and build software solutions targeted at public and private clouds utilizing technologies such as Openstack. He also developed the Crowbar Initiative, an open source project, to help address the needs of the industry around the migration to DevOps management styles. He was also a founding member of the Openstack Foundation Board of Directors.

Rackspace’s Igoe hire is only its ost recent move.  The company also recently made an investment in NoSQL database-as-a-service (DBaaS) provider Cloudant. The Rackspace investment of an undisclosed sum follows three months after Samsung Ventures made a similar strategic investment in the company.