There is a perception in IT that when it comes to open source software, the community "upstream" version of the software is where you go to test and develop your systems, but it's the commercial "downstream" version that gets put into actual production. Indeed, for many end users and customers of open source software, this pretty much reflects the reality. After all, why not have the best support and deployment options available for your production systems? The old "one-throat-to-choke" trope still has a powerful attraction in the IT community.

But not always.

Sometimes end users are skilled and knowledgeable about the open source software in question. Or the software is robust and manageable enough to make it easier to self-support. Or sometimes, such as with oVirt, it's a bit of both.

oVirt is the upstream for some excellent commercial products, such as Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and Wind River Open Virtualization. But that's not the end of the story. oVirt is also widely in production use at a number of companies, universities, and public institutions across the globe. This tends to surprise some people, because the idea that a free and libre virtual datacenter management platform is being used for production and at times mission-critical use cases shakes the foundation of commercial-only software for commercial deployments.

oVirt's user community is replete with such examples, organizations that have no trouble deploying and managing oVirt across their development, testing, and production stacks. Enough of them, in fact, that we have started a list of known end-users of oVirt, which are organizations that are either using oVirt on a regular basis, contributing to oVirt's community in some way, or using oVirt as part of a solution they deliver to their own clientele.

This list of users, sponsors, and supporters of oVirt complements our growing list of case studies containing detailed looks at organizations using oVirt in production today. The list also highlights members of our Board, which serves to govern and guide the project's success.

oVirt has a lot of stories to tell, and this ever-expanding list features just a few of the storytellers. For now.


About the author

Brian Proffitt is Senior Manager, Community Outreach within Red Hat's Open Source Program Office, focusing on enablement, community metrics and foundation and trade organization relationships. Brian's experience with community management includes knowledge of community onboarding, community health and business alignment. Prior to joining Red Hat in 2013, he was a technology journalist with a focus on Linux and open source, and the author of 22 consumer technology books.

Read full bio