Open Infrastructure [ oh-puh n in-fruh-struhk-cher]: the integration of open alternatives for all the different forms that compute storage and networking are taking now and in the future. The interoperable open source components are production ready, scale easily, and businesses can rely on them for real and emerging workloads.

Since 2010, OpenStack has been an open source infrastructure as a service (IaaS) software, but back then, the concept of infrastructure was different. Infrastructure was automated virtual machines (VMs) and storage. With Open Infrastructure, it’s important that what is built can be addressed with common APIs so that what you build locally is compatible with what you may use externally. This interoperability is increasingly important as you distribute compute power closer to the edge because standards and interoperability will be key. This will create an enhanced IaaS layer built with open source projects that is interoperable on which organizations you can build its applications. Now, the open infrastructure landscape covers dozens of open source projects that organizations can integrate to scale quickly, save money, and solve real world problems.

New applications higher up the stack have driven new demands on the underlying infrastructure like Artificial Intelligence where you need GPUs or FGPAs, environments that require running a lot of locations of distributed compute through the world including IoT, telecoms, and self driving cars or even massively multi-tenanted environments where you need better isolation and security in lighter weight ways. Open Infrastructure solves the low level problems so the upper layers can continue to innovate while having solid access to automated compute, storage and networking.