This week, Cisco completed the acquisition of, Piston Cloud. Piston Cloud has been a long time member and contributor to OpenStack. I've always admired their engineering-savvy approach to OpenStack, the unique and memorable way in which they've marketed themselves from a product and culture/brand perspective, and their engineering accomplishments that make it easier to deploy, consume, and scale OpenStack-powered private clouds.

Over the years, my professional relationships with some of the folks there have blossomed into personal relationships, and I'm happy to call many of these folks my friends. For that reason, I'm thrilled that they'll be joining those of us who came to Cisco via the Metacloud acquisition last year. (Metacloud is now called Cisco OpenStack? Private Cloud.)

I've already received a ton of questions about the specifics of the intended acquisition. In short, I'll quote Cisco Head of Business Development Hilton Romanski to address the most common question, "Is this a talent acquisition or is CloudOS part of the deal?"

Per Hilton, "CloudOS is part of the transaction, but it's too early to discuss specific plans for how we will utilize the technology in the future."

A of week from today, we'll welcome former Piston CEO co-founder Joshua McKenty to the podcast. (Joshua is now the field CTO for Cloud Foundry at Pivotal.) If you have any burning questions, tweet them to our show Twitter account at @openstackpod.

To my friends at Piston, and to those I have not yet met.... Welcome to the team! I can't wait to see what we'll accomplish!