Extreme hands StackStorm workflow automation to Linux group

Extreme Networks has handed control over StackStorm to The Linux Foundation, giving the open source organization a workflow automation platform that it can add to its other technologies aimed at service providers. 

Extreme said this week it believed the foundation's cadre of open-source developers could speed up StackStorm workflow development and adoption in the tech industry.

"After careful consideration and consultation with the StackStorm community, we've decided this promising open-source platform will be better served in the open market where it will provide a basic building block for new automation solutions we never thought possible," Eric Broockman, chief technology officer at Extreme, said in a statement.

DevOps teams use StackStorm, which Extreme acquired two years ago, to automate responses to events in network infrastructure and application environments in the data center. Admins, for example, can define within StackStorm workflow rules that tell network monitoring applications how to respond to a system failure. A list of technologies that support the platform is on the StackStorm Exchange. 

Benefits of The Linux Foundation

Cloud and communication service providers that use other technologies governed by The Linux Foundation, such as the Open Network Automation Platform, OpenSwitch or the Streaming Network Analytics System, will likely welcome the addition of StackStorm, analysts said.

However, who controls StackStorm is unlikely to interest the average enterprise, which typically uses the automation tools offered by its technology providers, such as Cisco, Juniper Networks or Arista.

"Mainstream enterprises mostly won't bat an eye, except for Extreme customers," Shamus McGillicuddy, an analyst at Enterprise Management Associates, based in Boulder, Colo.

Extreme uses StackStorm as the foundation for its proprietary product called Workflow Composer. Extreme acquired StackStorm in 2017 along with the rest of the data center networking portfolio of Brocade, which had bought the open source technology a year earlier.