I make my living from riding technology's bleeding edge. In particular I keep an eye on what's what with Linux and open-source software, but even I have trouble keeping track of what's going on with the open-source cloud technologies. Which is why I'm happy to welcome The Linux Foundation's 2015 report: Guide to the Open Cloud: Open Cloud Projects Profiled, which will be released on January 20th.

According to the Foundation, "The purpose of this guide is to serve as a starting point for users considering which projects to use in building and deploying their own open clouds. Taking a deeper look into cloud infrastructure, the paper includes storage, provisioning and platform projects. New categories outline emerging cloud operating systems, Software-defined Networking (SDN), and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) technologies"

In a statement, Amanda McPherson, The Linux Foundation's CMO said, "Our new 'Guide To the Open Cloud" is a helpful primer for any organization beginning a migration to the cloud or moving toward web-scale IT. Open source and collaboration are clearly advancing the cloud faster than ever before. Just consider the many OpenStack distributions and ecosystem emerging around Linux containers that didn't even exist a year ago. Yet, as the open-source cloud evolves so quickly, it can sometimes be difficult for enterprises to identify the technologies that best fit their needs."

This is a follow-up to the Foundation's October 2013 cloud guide. Much has changed since then. For example, Docker, the most popular open-source container technology, was barely known then.

This guide, according to its introduction, "is to serve as a starting point for users considering which projects to use in building and deploying their own open clouds." It is not a comprehensive overview of all cloud-related, open-source software. Instead, it's a curated listing of those open cloud projects that the Foundation believes "will continue to drive innovation in enterprise IT in the coming year."

The projects that made the cut have superior relevance to the open cloud, maturity and visibility. In particular, open-source programs that have a large number of contributors, code commits, and are already starting to be used in the enterprise were picked for this listing.

In short, if you're serious about using an open-source cloud, these are the programs that you should seriously consider using.

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