Cloudstack never heard of it

CloudStack – Never heard of it!
Giles Sirett
CEO, ShapeBlue
Giles.sirett@shapeblue.com
Twitter: @ShapeBlue

@ShapeBlue #CloudStack #CCCNA14 CloudStack Collaboration Conference NA 2014
 10:30-11:05
 Giles Sirett: the challenges we face in terms of awareness & market
perception
 11:05 – 11:40
 Mark Hinkle: opportunities for better promoting Apache CloudStack to
improve awareness and to reduce friction due to lack of brand awareness
 11:40 – 12:15
 Aaron Delp & Ken Hui: ways to get started in Social Media including Twitter,
Blogging, Podcasting, and Video Creation (The Social Media Pyramid) as
tools for both personal and community involvement
Our own “mini – track”

 CEO of ShapeBlue
 Been working with ACS since late 2011
 PMC member & Committer Apache CloudStack
 Chairman – European CloudStack user group
 Declaration: I’m a business guy
 Also: Physicist, ex-programmer, husband, runner, Dad, rugby
coach
About Me

My Qualifications for this subject
Weaknesses
Being focused on a single
technology as an expert can
be a good differentiator, but
also means the target market
is considerably smaller.
Threats
Much of the company's success
depends on CloudStack's success. If
OpenStack takes off as much as its
participants hope, will CloudStack be
less relevant?
451 Research, Feb 2014

“CloudStack –
Never heard of
it!”
Architect at unnamed
company that now runs a
200 host production ACS
environment

So we have a
perception
problem then

The good news first

www.shapeblue.com CloudStack Collaboration Conference 2012
Apache
CloudStack is
great
software “We could see
CloudStack was a
game changer”
John Gillam, CTO,
BT Cloud

CloudStack Users

10
CloudStack Users 2.0

11
CloudStack Users 3.0

200+ active contributors,
7o+ organisations
Now 72 86 committers
Our Community is great

Our community is driven by users

So, what’s the problem then ?

________ ___ is the smallest amount of fissile
material needed for a sustained nuclear chain
reaction.
Critical Mass

This is an asymmetric situation

Cloud
OpenStack

Our main defence play
We are production ready,
we’re easy to install. That
other thing you’re
considering isn’t

So, onto the problems that we CAN control

Don’t shoot
Don’t shoot the
messenger

Problem #1
We do NOT engage customers well

The world according to ASF
The roles
• Users
• Contributors
• Committers
• PMC
• Customers?

The most important participants in the project are people who use our
software. Users can contribute to the Apache projects by providing
feedback to developers in the form of bug reports and feature
suggestions. As well, users can participate in the Apache community by
helping other users on mailing lists and user support forums. Users who
participate in the project through any mechanism are considered to be
Contributors
The most important participants in the project are the
people who don’t contribute directly to the project.
They are the people who influence others in order to
allow them to use our software. They are the customers

The FOSS adoption cycle
Contributors
Committers
Development
Adoption
Users

The FOSS adoption cycle
Contributors
Committers
DevelopmentCustomers
Adoption
Users
Marketing
Perception
Engagement

Making a key technology choice
I think we need to do
cloud

We do
Cloud

Look at
our clouds

We’re
better
than the
others
because…

Everybody
else says
we’re
great

All our
customers

You have to
choose us
Deal

I think we need to do
cloud….I’ll think I’ll
phone CloudStack

“Subscribe to @Users – we’re all nice guys”

Problem #2
We rely on volunteer marketing
Not enough in the asymmetric world

Problem #3
Once we engage customers, how can they
support us ?
User>Contributor>Committer>
Customer > ????

Problem #4
Our largest contributor has a $dayjob
Citrix do not sell CloudStack
No incentive at grassroots level
Waiver: Citrix created this thing, that was visionary. Citrix spend $$$$ in supporting
this project. They are our biggest contributor and, without their hard work, events
like this wouldn’t happen …..today

Problem #5
The ASF has the best OSS governance
model…
Prohibits direct commercial support for
project

Problem #6
Not enough users become contributors

Problem #7
“I could see the
tumbleweeds
blowing through
your community”
CEO of SDN startup
Mailing lists don’t demonstrate
activity well to outside world

Summary
 A great product, great community
 Perception & awareness problems
 Our structure doesn't let us engage well with
customers
 Need for more coherent marketing
 How do we fix it ?

Cloudstack never heard of it

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