Open-source cloud battle in the field

The saliva war between everyday familiar open source software and proprietary IT products now seems to be on the verge of a cloud-wide roll-out and mutual attacks between several key vendors are becoming increasingly fierce. The latest round of disputes took place in about a few weeks ago. Citrix announced that it will introduce CloudStack cloud build platform under its name into the Apache Software Foundation to establish a model that can compete with OpenStack. Prior to this, OpenStack in the field of open source cloud growth momentum has not stopped over. Although Citrix's move was initially thought of as a competition with OpenStack, both companies are now unanimously targeting a common enemy: VMware.

A VMware executive blogged about rivals as "ugly sisters," comparing VMware to Prince Charming and Cinderella, who elope with the user. On the same day that the blog was published, a Citrix executive wrote a blog post titled "vCloud or vPumpkin" to fight back and expects VMware to be dead in the hands of users choosing an open-source cloud deployment model. Citroen's Peder Ulander said in a blog post that the only thing VMware and Cinderella have is that the image you've created is just disappearing in front of you.

Officials at Rackspace, one of the largest backers of the OpenStack project, also set the bar, but this time it is targeting Amazon Web Services. Lanham Napier, the CEO of Rackspace, said in an interview that Amazon's proprietary system is customer-locked. We think OpenStack will be the technical standard and our excellent technical support will be the service standard. We are trying to create a better service.

Forrester Research analyst James Staten said there has been a debate over open and proprietary products in the IT space. It is clear that we are now in the midst of this debate. The de facto standard in one industry "scares people," prompting some to consider alternative standards. Starn said the controversy appears to be breaking out. In the cloud, Amazon Web Services APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) are becoming a de facto standard that sets the scene for debate among vendors.

But what does this mean for the customer?

Starn said the debate between open-source and proprietary software has never been a black-and-white issue for both. Open vendors say their users have more flexibility, allowing them to push open-source software their way. Proprietary vendors promote stability and manageability to users.

Marc Brien, cloud analyst at Domicity Inc., said proprietary cloud offerings are now more advanced. In the medium term, an enterprise or a service provider with a full-featured cloud may consider proprietary solution technologies to be more mature and secure. In the early days of cloud computing, VMware and Amazon enjoyed tremendous room. However, as open source software rapidly gains momentum, they find themselves shrinking in market space.

Floyd Strimling, a cloud technology expert and blogger at Zenoss, said competition is actually good for users. Competition will push manufacturers to innovate and lower prices. This is good for the end user. For example, VMware now has expanded its vCloud network to more than 100 providers.

Streeplin said mutual criticism among cloud providers is just like every day attacks in the U.S. presidential election. These attacks will intensify in the coming weeks. Streeplin said that although we are not paying attention to the malicious attacks of every day, we will all bear the consequences. If open source cloud vendors can significantly weaken VMware and Amazon Web services market share, this will create a new opportunity for cloud service providers to deliver services around open source products, just as Red Hat did with the Linux kernel. However, VMware and Amazon Web Services now have an unwavering market leadership.

Finally, Streeplin states that customers generally have two priorities: to make this product or service work, or to choose not to use this product and service if it does not work. The desire for user portability is why he believes the cloud is a legitimate replacement for a proprietary product. Merely matching the hypervisor between the local site and the public cloud provider is not enough to transfer data between cloud providers. He believes that many users require real interoperability of workload and storage. Open source providers say they have portability features. And VMware claims it has a provider ecosystem that offers user choice.

What is the outcome of this debate? Streeplin said the big companies that should be focused are still the market leader Amazon Web Services. Amazon Web Services recently signed an agreement that allows open source private cloud vendor Eucalyptus to make its API compatible with Amazon Web Services. Streeplin said he is interested in seeing how Amazon Web Services continue to recognize that private cloud compatibility is moving forward.

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