It’s been less than a year since Citrix submitted CloudStack for incubation at the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), but already the open source Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform has been named a Top-Level Project.

“Apache CloudStack has graduated from the Apache Incubator to become a Top-Level Project (TLP), signifying that the project’s community and products have been well-governed under the ASF’s meritocratic process and principles,” the foundation announced on Monday.

Apache CloudStack is a complete software suite for creating IaaS cloud computing in private, public and hybrid cloud environments. Originally created by Cloud.com, which was acquired by Citrix in 2011, CloudStack was submitted to the Apache Incubator in April 2012. 

‘A Really Strong Community’

“When CloudStack first became an Apache Incubator project, it was a well-established cloud management platform with a mature codebase,” said Chip Childers, vice president of Apache CloudStack. “Our work in the incubator has focused on growing a really strong community around the code and establishing the governance practices expected of a Top-Level Project within the Apache Software Foundation.”

Apache CloudStack can be used by individuals and organizations alike, but service providers and enterprises are among its target environments. Service providers can use CloudStack to set up on-demand, elastic cloud computing services, for instance, while for enterprises, it offers a way to set up a private cloud for use by employees. 

Released under the Apache License v2.0, Apache CloudStack is overseen by a team of active contributors. Source code, documentation, mailing lists, and related resources are available at the project site.

‘A Significant Milestone’

Now, the project’s graduation to Top-Level Project is an important step in its evolution and growth, Childers said.

“Graduating as a TLP is always a significant achievement for an open source project, because it’s not done trivially,” Stephen O’Grady, cofounder and principal analyst at RedMonk, told Linux.com. “What difference it will make within the enterprise is unclear, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction for the CloudStack project.”

Indeed, “this is a significant milestone and achievement for CloudStack, which continues to present a viable, production-ready open source cloud computing option for many large enterprises and service providers in the market today,” agreed Jay Lyman, senior analyst for enterprise software, at 451 Research.

‘More Credibility’

There is still “more momentum and mindshare around rival OpenStack,” Lyman told Linux.com, but “CloudStack provides the same levels of openness that are critical to flexibility, avoiding vendor lock-in and customization for integrating with existing infrastructure.”

The project’s promotion to an Apache Top-Level Project “will give CloudStack more credibility with enterprise and service provider organizations and should help to continue and promote a vital open source software community,” he noted.

Not only that, but “I also believe that just as open source software choices have helped drive one another in the past — as in the case of Linux distributions, Xen and KVM or Chef and Puppet — CloudStack and OpenStack are benefiting from one another’s growth and the overall credibility of open source cloud stacks in the market,” Lyman added.