Cloud computing stands well poised to help enterprises significantly improve their business IT speed, agility and costs. However, the fear of technology "lock-in" - difficulty in switching cloud hosting providers or platforms due to enterprise size and scale - continues to discourage some large corporations from realizing the benefits of the Cloud.

This whitepaper discusses the lock-in enterprises face with cloud computing and how OpenStack open-source platform can help. Next, it defines in detail the components and inner workings of OpenStack technology. It concludes by providing basic guidance on how to help successfully evaluate the value of OpenStack technology for the enterprise.