This weeks OpenStack Summit in Vancouver showcased some of the ways large corporations and newer startups have used the OpenStack framework to build some cool applications. Companies like HP, IBM, and Redhat along with SwiftStack and Bluebox were on-hand at the conference to show developers what is new in cloud computing. We all know that OpenStack has been one of the most popular open source development projects ever. And companies like Rackspace use the framework to host applications at their data centers.

Other stories told at the conference included how Comcast and Walmart are using Canonical’s version of OpenStack to improve their data centers. This is important as OpenStack by itself is most often too difficult to implement. And Nebula, a company that tried to make OpenStack more widely used, closed down just recently.

The advantage that OpenStack does have is in its goal to be a standard in the industry, allowing applications across companies to work well with each other. This is in contrast to the route Amazon, Microsoft and Google have gone in developing their own clouds that stand alone. In addition, different implementations of OpenStack have lacked interoperability with one another as companies add proprietary code to make the framework work for them. At the summit, a list of companies have announced that their clouds do work with one another, a step forward in the industry.

OpenStack 101 - What Is OpenStack?