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OpenInfra Summit Europe: Catalyzing Resilience in AI and Cloud Infrastructure

Today, the OpenInfra Summit Europe commenced at the prestigious École Polytechnique in Paris, marking a significant moment for the global open infrastructure community. This summit attracts key leaders from various sectors, including cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), telecommunications, and the public sector. Together, they are demonstrating the transformative power of open source technologies in building resilient organizational frameworks.

The opening keynotes set the tone, focusing on the crucial theme, "OpenInfra as a Catalyst for Resilience." This theme embodies how open-source infrastructure enables organizations to better endure rapid changes, including vendor disruption and geopolitical upheaval, a challenge faced by many CIOs today. Notably, this summit is the first since the OpenInfra Foundation formalized its relationship with the Linux Foundation, a collaboration aimed at enhancing the integration of open technologies worldwide.

One of the pivotal topics discussed was the growing pressures stemming from companies like VMware. Recent research indicates that around 73% of VMware users anticipate significant price hikes following Broadcom’s acquisition, prompting a swift evaluation of open-source alternatives. With this backdrop, a live demo showcasing the migration from VMware to OpenStack was conducted, highlighting practical pathways that various organizations such as Canonical, Rackspace, Red Hat, Worteks, and ZConverter can take towards adopting OpenStack from proprietary frameworks.

Another crucial point raised was the surging demand for AI implementation. As businesses strive to scale their AI solutions securely and economically, the reliance on open infrastructure is more pronounced than ever. Open infrastructure has emerged as a robust foundation for GPU-intensive and high-throughput setups, showcasing its capacity to support AI innovation. Collaborations with industry giants such as NVIDIA further emphasize the critical role of open-source in advancing secure and confidential computing for AI workloads, particularly with the integration of Kata Containers.

Accompanying the summit, a new white paper titled "Open Infrastructure for AI: OpenStack's Role in the Next Generation Cloud" was released, detailing how collaborative endeavors are shaping the upcoming era of AI-ready infrastructure.

The conversation surrounding security in AI was also paramount. As AI systems and containerized workloads proliferate, the implementation of Kata Containers and Confidential Containers is advancing secure computing practices. A notable keynote from Ant Group emphasized how such technologies enhance the isolation and attestation processes for GPU-accelerated AI systems, thereby fostering trust and robustness.

Digital sovereignty was another crucial theme discussed. Participants from Europe, particularly providers like Telekom Cloud, OVHcloud, and VanillaCore, illustrated how open technologies foster portability, transparency, and control—essential attributes in navigating new compliance and policy requirements.

Thierry Carrez, the general manager of the OpenInfra Foundation, encapsulated the overarching sentiment of the summit perfectly. He stated, “The world currently requires sovereign, high-performance, and sustainable infrastructure that is compatible and secure while maintaining collaboration with AI, containers, and trusted execution environments. Open infrastructure enables nations to control their data and applications while benefiting from global teamwork.” The summit is a testament to this vision as organizations work hand in hand to define the future landscape of resilient AI-capable open infrastructure.

The agenda of the summit also featured notable case studies from leading adopters and contributors who demonstrated resilience in action. Organizations like BMW and Workday shared insights on utilizing Zuul, OpenInfra's CI/CD gating system, to enhance code reliability and uptime. Furthermore, OVHcloud and other European tech firms presented cutting-edge developments in areas like storage and networking, emphasizing solutions that meet sovereignty expectations, with multiple sessions focused on using OpenStack, Ceph, and NVMe-oF in production.

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), one of Europe’s pivotal computing users, showcased how open infrastructure massively contributes to operational forecasting. Furthermore, the finals of the Superuser Award highlighted European organizations such as ECMWF, G-Research, and Telecom Paris for their roles in pioneering open infrastructure advancements.

Keynotes pivoted on the notion that resilience in today's world transcends mere failover strategies; it encompasses sustainability, skills, and flexibility. Open-source infrastructure helps mitigate vendor lock-in, enhances security through transparency, and ensures recoverability via global collaboration. Furthermore, to sustain this resilience, a key focus was laid on addressing the talent shortage in open infrastructure through university partnerships and engaging with policymakers on future regulations shaping open-source technology.

Lastly, as OpenInfra is set to enter a new chapter, the community reiterated its commitment to proving that open collaboration is the most effective and sustainable method to foster resilience. Collectively, they are developing infrastructure primed for AI, equipped to promote sovereignty, and designed to adapt through times of transition far into the future.

About the OpenInfra Summit

The OpenInfra Summit Europe will run from October 17 to October 19 at École Polytechnique in Paris, bringing together developers, operators, and decision-makers from various industries including finance, government, telecommunications, manufacturing, and IT. The program will showcase critical discussions on OpenStack, Kata Containers, StarlingX, and Zuul, among other collaborative technologies with Linux and Kubernetes. The event also features co-located gatherings like the Gerrit User Summit and VM Migration Day. OVHcloud is the headline sponsor for this event, while Huawei, Canonical, and Mirantis serve as premiere sponsors.

About the OpenInfra Foundation

The OpenInfra Foundation is dedicated to fostering communities that develop open-source infrastructure software deployed in real-world scenarios. Supported by over 110,000 individuals across 187 countries, the Foundation hosts numerous open-source projects and collaborative communities, focusing on infrastructure for AI, container-native applications, edge computing, and datacenter clouds. It operates as a nonprofit part of the Linux Foundation. For more information, please visit www.openinfra.org.