OW2con'14

In this opening talk we take the open source practitioner's perspective to look at policy issues raised by a key question in the value chain of open source cloud software innovation: will the code be successful? From its beginnings of landmark projects developed by individuals, open source software has evolved into a support mechanism for innovations carried out by ecosystems of companies and research organizations working together in collaborative projects. We will look at several  open source cloud-oriented collaborative projects including some from the European Open Cloud Directory and see how, while these innovative ecosystems create breakthrough technologies, they do not aim at delivering market-ready products. These projects confront us with what we call the Delivery Challenge of open source innovation: i.e. how to guarantee the operational quality of these innovations, how to turn these innovations into competitive offerings. While large users are quickly getting familiar with cloud technologies, offering the benefits of the cloud to SMEs is still a necessary evolution. This market will be ripped by a, emerging breed of service vendors with packaged mature offerings helping SMEs make the best out of their own infrastructure and the heterogenous cloud ecosystem.