cloudstack never heard of it

CloudStack – Never heard of it!Giles Sirett

CEO, [email protected]

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

WeaknessesBeing focused on a single technology as an expert can be a good differentiator, but also means the target market is considerably smaller.

ThreatsMuch 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

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CloudStack Collaboration Conference 2012

Apache CloudStack

is great software “We could see

CloudStack was a game changer”John Gillam, CTO, BT Cloud

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CloudStack Users

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CloudStack Users 2.0

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CloudStack Users 3.0

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200+ active contributors, 7o+ organisationsNow 72 86 committers

Our Community is great

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Our community is driven by users

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So, what’s the problem then ?

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________ ___ is the smallest amount of fissile material needed for a sustained

nuclear chain reaction.

Critical Mass

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This is an asymmetric situation

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Cloud

OpenStack

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Our main defence play

We are production ready, we’re easy to

install. That other thing you’re

considering isn’t

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So, onto the problems that we CAN control

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Don’t shoot Don’t shoot the

messenger

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Problem #1

We do NOT engage customers well



The world according to ASF

The roles• Users• Contributo

rs• Committer

s• 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 cycleContributors

Committers

Development

Customers

Adoption

Users

Marketing

Perception

Engagement

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Making a key technology choice

I think we need to do cloud

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We do Cloud

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Look at our

clouds

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We’re better

than the others

because…

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Everybody else

says we’re great


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All our customer

s


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You have to choose

us

Deal

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

I’ll phone CloudStack

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

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Problem #2

We rely on volunteer marketing

Not enough in the asymmetric world

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Problem #3

Once we engage customers, how can they support us ?

User>Contributor>Committer>

Customer > ????

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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

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Problem #5

The ASF has the best OSS governance model…

Prohibits direct commercial support for project

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Problem #6

Not enough users become contributors

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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

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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!Giles Sirett

CEO, [email protected]

Twitter: @ShapeBlue

cloudstack never heard of it

Technology

key technology

giles sirett

important

shapeblue

sirettshapeblue

engage customers

community

cloudstack