What the 2018 OpenStack User Survey Reveals About Cloud Trends and Vendor Rankings

Background

When the OpenStack Summit opened in Berlin on November 13, the OpenStack Foundation released its 2018 User Survey report, the 11th global survey covering responses collected from August 2017 to August 2018.

Key Findings

OpenStack Adoption Extends Beyond IT

The survey shows OpenStack is increasingly deployed in non‑IT sectors. While IT still accounts for the largest share, its proportion fell from 51% in 2017 to 44% in 2018. Notably, the financial sector’s share jumped from 3% to 8%, and government/defense and retail/e‑commerce also saw noticeable growth.

Kubernetes Remains the Dominant Container Orchestrator

61% of respondents use Kubernetes to manage PaaS and container workloads on top of OpenStack. Users such as BBVA, CERN, China UnionPay, Volkswagen, and Walmart Labs confirm that Kubernetes has maintained its lead since 2016, especially in multi‑cloud environments where 70% of those users operate multiple clouds.

Bare‑Metal Cloud (Ironic) Gains Momentum

Production‑grade deployments using OpenStack Ironic rose from 9% in 2016 to 24% in 2018, making it the fastest‑growing OpenStack component. Among users running Kubernetes on OpenStack, Ironic usage reaches 37%. The CNCF‑certified Magnum installer is also widely adopted at 16%.

Multi‑Cloud Users Rely Heavily on OpenStack

78% of OpenStack users identify as multi‑cloud operators. Of these, 44% choose AWS, 28% Azure, and 24% Google as their public‑cloud partners, while OpenStack itself accounts for 58% of their overall cloud infrastructure.

Top OpenStack Software Vendors

The survey ranks software vendors by the share of respondents using their OpenStack distribution: Huawei (28%), EasyStack (22%), Red Hat (20%), Canonical (16%), Mirantis (5%), Debian (4%), 99Cloud (4%), Rackspace (4%), HPE (4%), SUSE (3%), VMware (2%), IBM (2%), Dell EMC (2%), and others (10%). Notably, EasyStack entered the top three for the first time, and Huawei became the first Chinese company to rank first globally.

Top OpenStack Hardware Vendors

In the hardware category, Dell EMC leads with 33% of respondents, followed by Huawei at 29% and HPE at 27%, highlighting Huawei’s strong presence in both software and hardware rankings.