tl;dr I’d like to use a slot in the cross-project track to discuss the best way 
of managing cross-project, multi-cycle initiatives, using the forthcoming Cloud 
Service Federation (Broker) project to make it concrete rather than 
theoretical. Desired outcome: recommendations to Product group, verticals, TC 
on the right governance for such initiatives.

[Doug asked me to expand on my earlier proposal, and get your feedback.] 


There’s a lot of interest in the broad topic of Federation of OpenStack 
services, by which I mean the delivery and consumption of cloud services using 
multiple independently operated clouds. There are various use cases, including 
reseller, broker, and cloud-bursting, each with specific requirements. For many 
people, “federation” is interpreted as an identity management problem; here 
we’re taking a broader view.

During Kilo, the Keystone team implemented a number of features (hierarchical 
multitenancy, Keystone-to-Keystone, and others) which are key enabling 
technologies for broader service federation. We (I work for Cisco Intercloud 
Services) are planning to launch a Stackforge project to develop a complete 
solution for one of the use cases: a Broker system which supports the 
aggregation of virtual regions for resale or other consumption patterns.

Why would this be of interest in the cross-project session, and what would we 
want to get out of such a discussion? Well, the Broker project will depend on 
new work in various projects. At a minimum, we anticipate that it will involve 
Horizon (DB-backed configuration, as in Keystone), Nova (quotas), Glance 
(resource ownership and visibility), and Ceilometer (domain-aggregated 
queries). There will be more. In some cases, we expect the work to extend over 
a couple of cycles.

If this were a unique case, we’d probably resort to the traditional approach of 
filing multiple blueprints and working one-on-one with PTLs. However, there is 
reason to believe that this kind of situation is going to become more common. 
We have several working groups (Win The Enterprise, NFV, etc.) that are 
developing systems-level requirements for OpenStack, and whose success will 
depend on multiple-project, multiple-cycle coordination. The Product Management 
group which was formed after Paris is proposing to play a role in this area - 
is that the right approach? Meanwhile we are moving towards a new tag-based 
project governance framework (not to mention a new branding regime).

So my purpose in bringing the Cloud Service Federation project to the 
cross-project track is to discuss how we want to handle this kind of 
systems-level initiative (“epic”, if you like). How should we manage the 
dependencies and priorities? Are the existing methods adequate, or do we need a 
more formal approach? This kind of discussion is often frustrating in the 
abstract, as we saw at several sessions in Paris. Thanks to the Keystone team’s 
work in Kilo, we’re about to launch a very specific, concrete project, and I 
think this will make the discussion of alternative governance more productive. 

Geoff
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