The OpenStack Foundation has announced the 16th version of OpenStack, code-named Pike. The foundation recently moved the fully open source private cloud platform to a six month release cycle.

In an interview, Jonathan Bryce, executive director of the OpenStack foundation, told us that OpenStack is experiencing wide adoption and unique use cases all around the globe. The software now powers 60 public cloud availability zones and more than a thousand private clouds running across more than five million physical cores.

Bryce also added that this release reflects the improvements that the community wanted in the software, especially a modular approach that enables users to use a mix of open source technologies with OpenStack.

The foundation said in a press release that OpenStack’s modular architecture also allows you to pick the functionality you need – whether that’s bare metal or block storage provisioning – to plug in to your infrastructure stack. This composability – which makes possible use cases like edge computing and NFV (network functions virtualization) – is a marked distinction from proprietary on-premises offerings, or even earlier versions of OpenStack.

The release is available for free from the OpenStack Pike page.

The OpenStack community will be meeting in Sydney, Australia, in November for the OpenStack Summit to see the release in action through demos. Attendees from more than 50 countries will gather to hear speakers from American Airlines, China Railway, Saudi Telecom, Commonwealth Bank, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Sprint, Adobe Marketing Cloud, and Tencent talk about multicloud strategies, cost savings, and increasing agility with OpenStack. An ADMIN /Linux Pro Magazine news editor will be on-site to cover the event for readers.