I was in Tokyo last week, for the latest OpenStack Summit. Over 5,000 people joined me from around the world, to discuss this open source cloud project's latest – Liberty – release, to lay the groundwork for next year's Mitaka release, and to highlight stories of successful adoption.


Tokyo's Hamarikyu Gardens combine old with new (Source: Paul Miller)

And, unlike many events, this wasn't a hermetically sealed bubble of blandly anodyne mid-Atlantic content, served up to the same globe-trotting audience in characterless rooms that could so easily have been in London, Frankfurt, or Chicago. Instead, we heard from local implementers of OpenStack like Fujitsu, Yahoo! Japan, and – from just across the water – SK Telecom and Huawei. 

In keynotes, case studies, and deep-dive technical sessions, attendees learned what worked, debated where to go next, and considered the project's complicated relationship to containers, software-defined networks, the giants of the public cloud, and more.

My colleague, Lauren Nelson, and I have just published a Quick Take to capture some of our immediate impressions from the event. As our report discusses, the Foundation is making some good progress but there are a number of clear challenges that must still be addressed. How well do you think the Foundation is addressing the challenges we discuss?