Open Stack

Hello Subbu (and committee),
Some thoughts:

From: Subbu Allamaraju <subbu at subbu.org<mailto:subbu at subbu.org>>
Date: Thursday, August 28, 2014 9:26 PM
To: "user-committee at lists.openstack.org<mailto:user-committee at lists.openstack.org>" <user-committee at lists.openstack.org<mailto:user-committee at lists.openstack.org>>
Subject: [User-committee] Users vs operators

Hi Everyone,

I'm a new recruit into the user committee, and Tom just pointed me to http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/user-committee/2014-August/000265.html. It was a good discussion, and it is great to see clarity on operator vs user.

I've a couple of questions:

1. Isn't there a need for similar working groups that are operator centric? The two operator meet ups we've had this year are filling that gap to an extent.

I think there is a need for operator focused working groups, but it's probably best to have them grouped around common use cases - (large deployers, enterprise users, public clouds, telcos, etc). There was also some good discussion at the Ops summit this week around working groups built around certain architectures.  These might be more transient, but for example, the current push by the Nova team to drive cells to feature completion (and hopefully make it default) could be easily parred with a working group of Operators focused on feedback, blueprint reviews etc in support of the effort.

In general, though, I think we need guardrails to get the right sized groups of Operators together and keep them focused on a few things.  We are a broad and diverse group.  So, we can easily get mired down in our won diversity.  If we can find the right commonalities to rally different Operators around, I think we can see better results.  The next big hurdle for the harnessing the power of the Operator is to start driving tangible change back into the development cycle.  There are some on the Ops side that still think OpenStack functions more as a giant science project for a lot of developers.  I'm not saying that's true, but we need to eliminate that view.  Those folks need to see real change coming from groups using/running the product – not just those writing it.

The two mini-summits and the Ops sessions in ATL have proven to be great starts to the overall process, but my general take is we are struggling to get over the hump of pushing tangible change out of these meetings.  To some degree, this has been because we had to allow for some general fussing and whining to take place early on and get that collectively out of everyone's systems.  We saw some reasonable progress in areas when we broke the larger group down and focused them on some topics in San Antonio.  Properly formed working groups – with strong leaders – could be a way to continue that momentum and turn it into real changes.

2. What's the role of the user committee? Is it a committee for users or operators or both?

Absolutely for both.  The reality is that OpenStack, as a product, is out there and in use by all manner of industries and organizations.  I do think the User committee has a being responsibility to articulate the collective voice – of both the end users and operators – through actions like the User Survey, etc.  I also think, however, that it can turn that data into action by helping to assemble the right working groups and arming them to fix specific pain the survey identifies.


Cheers
Subbu

Those are some of my thoughts at least.  Sorry for the long email, but this has all been on my mind after lots of conversations at the mini-summit.

Thanks!
Matt
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