NASA, Rackspace launch cloud platform

SAN ANTONIO, USA: Rackspace Hosting announced the launch of OpenStack, an open-source cloud platform to foster cloud interoperability.

Rackspace, a hosting and cloud computing solutions provider, is donating the code that powers its Cloud Files and Cloud Servers public-cloud offerings to the OpenStack project. The project will also incorporate technology that powers the NASA Nebula Cloud Platform.

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"Modern scientific computation requires ever increasing storage and processing power delivered on-demand," said Chris C. Kemp, CTO, IT, NASA. "To serve this demand, we built Nebula, an infrastructure cloud platform designed to meet the needs of our scientific and engineering community."

OpenStack is available now. The next component planned for release is a scalable compute-provisioning engine based on the NASA Nebula cloud technology and Rackspace Cloud Servers technology.

"We are founding the OpenStack initiative to help drive industry standards, prevent vendor lock-in and generally increase the velocity of innovation in cloud technologies," said Lew Moorman, president, Cloud and CSO, Rackspace. "We expect ongoing collaboration with NASA and the rest of the community to drive more-rapid cloud adoption and innovation, in the private and public spheres."