Cloud Computing Pioneers: Randy Bias

Randy Bias

Randy Bias, cofounder and CTO of CloudScaling, has been a specialist in IT infrastructure since 1990, which positioned him to think through and lead some of the leading cloud computing innovations. He was a pioneer implementer of infrastructure-as-a-service as VP of technology strategy at GoGrid, a division of hosting provider ServePath. GoGrid launched a public beta of its Grid infrastructure in March 2008.

He pioneered one of the first multi-platform, multi-cloud management systems at CloudScale Networks and went on to found CloudScaling, where he was a successful implementer of large-scale clouds based on a young and unproven open source code software stack, OpenStack. Those large-scale clouds included KT, the largest cloud service in Korea (formerly known as Korea Telecom), and big data center services provider Internap.

Part of the support OpenStack receives is based on these implementations, and Bias was elected as one of eight gold-sponsor board members of the OpenStack Foundation. He keeps an unvarnished point of view on cloud claims and cloud pretensions, and is known for his uncompromising point of view. In 2009, he advocated the efficiencies of cloud computing as a way to counter climate change.

The O'Reilly Radar blog says Bias "led the open licensing of GoGrid's API, which inspired Sun Microsystems, Rackspace Cloud, VMware and others to open license their cloud APIs." Source: information week