OpenStack Foundation
OpenStack Foundation, now operating as the OpenInfra Foundation, is a nonprofit organization that oversees open source infrastructure software projects for building and running cloud and container-based environments.
- Stewardship and governance of OpenStack (cloud infrastructure) and related open infrastructure projects
- Community-driven development of software for compute, storage, and networking in private and public clouds
- Reference architectures, documentation, and project guidance for deploying and operating open infrastructure
- Events, working groups, and collaboration programs connecting users, operators, and vendors
- Open source licensing and neutral governance for multi-vendor ecosystem participation
More About OpenStack Foundation
The OpenStack Foundation, which now operates under the name OpenInfra Foundation, focuses on open source infrastructure software used by enterprises, service providers, and research institutions to build and operate cloud environments. Its core scope centers on projects that support Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), container infrastructure, and related open infrastructure technologies used in data centers and edge environments.
The organization is closely associated with OpenStack (cloud infrastructure), a widely adopted open source platform for managing large pools of compute, storage, and networking resources through APIs and a dashboard. OpenStack-based clouds are typically deployed in enterprise private cloud environments, telecom and network operator platforms, and service provider public or hosted clouds. These deployments commonly integrate with virtualization technologies, Software Defined Networking (SDN), and software-defined storage (SDS), and they expose programmable interfaces that align with modern DevOps workflows.
The OpenInfra Foundation provides neutral governance, project oversight, and community processes for OpenStack and additional open infrastructure projects, which may span areas such as container infrastructure, Continuous Integration (CI), and hardware enablement. Its model centers on technical contribution, open design, and community code review, with a defined technical committee and project teams managing the evolution of individual services and components. This framework is intended to support predictable release cycles and long-term maintenance for production deployments.
From an enterprise architecture perspective, OpenStack and related projects System Integration Testing (SIT) in the cloud infrastructure and cloud management categories, often serving as an alternative to proprietary IaaS platforms. The ecosystem includes vendors that provide commercial distributions, integration services, and hardware platforms validated for OpenStack-based clouds, as well as operators that run OpenStack in large-scale production. The foundation’s documentation, reference architectures, and community forums offer deployment and operations patterns for scenarios such as multi-tenant clouds, Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) (network functions virtualization), and high-availability infrastructure.
Within a technology directory, OpenStack Foundation (OpenInfra Foundation) aligns with categories such as open source cloud infrastructure, cloud management and orchestration, and open infrastructure community governance. Its work is directed at organizations that require control over infrastructure software, interoperability across vendors, and the ability to run workloads on premises, in hosted environments, or at edge locations using open source components maintained under a neutral, community-driven governance model.