I appreciate the author acknowledging some of the hurdles and warning signs that could portend against OpenStack's viability. There are currently an impressive array of organizations pledging support, but talk is cheap. (Very cool that patches are flowing in from some of them already.)

I think the most important signal is another serious provider stepping up alongside of Rackspace with a compatible OpenStack offering. Until then, this is just Rackspace's cloud implementation. Albeit a completely open one that you could in theory replicate on your own hardware, but I imagine that option would be small comfort to most people using IaaS clouds.

Still, it's awesome that they're trying to make it happen, and I'll be rooting for them.