In the search for the next big thing, Google has joined the OpenStack Foundation.

The Mountain View, California-based colossus announced July 16 that it has become a corporate sponsor of the Foundation.

What’s next: room for container innovation

As containers take up more mindspace, Google’s official endorsement to OpenStack portends future growth in this arena. As OpenStack COO Mark Collier noted in his announcement of Google’s sponsorship, “With Google committing unequaled container and container management engineering expertise to our community, the deployment of containers via proven orchestration engines like Kubernetes will accelerate rapidly.”

Hybrid cloud gathers steam

The relationship of Google and OpenStack consolidates the importance of the hybrid cloud. If Google and the OpenStack Foundation can guarantee that containers run well when they are managed on OpenStack, it will better appeal to companies that want to combine legacy virtualized and non-virtualized applications as well as state-of-the-art container applications from a sole dashboard.

Great news on Google joining OpenStack. They finally realized public cloud s*cks. Go Private Cloud ! On-prem rulllzzz. — IT Doesnt Matter (@ITDoesn_tMatter) July 16, 2015

OpenStack + Google = better jobs

OpenStack on your resume is already catnip for recruiters, that plus Google can only boost your prospects. "The cost of OpenStack engineers are on average $50,000 a year more expensive than Microsoft, VMware or Red Hat engineers," said analyst William Fellows speaking with Toby Wolpe of ZDNet. "That will change over time but what OpenStack really needs it to supersize itself. In other words it needs for there to be a much bigger market in terms of available talent."

Get yourself up to speed

If you’re just starting out with OpenStack, here’s some background on the new alliance.

The wedding follows a long and happy engagement period, the two organizations paired up on previous projects including application catalog Murano and the API service for container orchestration, Magnum.

The recent OpenStack Vancouver Summit featured the dynamic duo of Google’s cloud efforts, Craig McLuckie and Kit Merker, speaking on "Docker on OpenStack with Kubernetes" and a number of other sessions — also recorded for your viewing pleasure — dedicated to containers.

Google will also be out in full force at the upcoming OpenStack Silicon Valley event, August 26 – 27, with how-to sessions and deep dives into container technology.

The search giant becomes a member of the OpenStack family already brimming with major corporate sponsors, including Alcatel-Lucent, Citrix, Comcast, Cray, GoDaddy, Fujitsu, Oracle, SAP, Nokia and the Linux Foundation.

Cover Photo by

Jeff Krause // CC BY

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