Open source cloud computing collaboration ecology Matures

If the previous topic on open source has focused more on technology and product levels, today, open source technology is bringing more choices to cloudy users, and is also heating up a new ecosystem.

Open Source Application Opportunity Highlights

OpenStack Foundation chairman Alan Clark's visit to China, IBM KVM Center of Excellence, China Cloud Foundry Open Alliance established ... This series of hot spots, gathered at the end of 2012, focused attention on the same keyword-open source. This time, close contact with open source technology is the ubiquitous cloud computing.

If the previous topic on open source has focused more on technology and product levels, today, open source technology is bringing more choices to cloudy users, and is also heating up a new ecosystem.

After six months of preparation, China Open source Cloud Alliance was formally established in August 2012. Three months later, the alliance announced a second group of members, based on Intel, Sina, the winning software, Shanghai Jiaotong University and other founding members, the new addition of Lenovo, ZTE, Huasheng and other partner members. During this period, Intel launched the Open Source project OED (OpenStack Easy Deployment), launched by Sina and implementation of the Stacklab Open Laboratory officially online, become the leading domestic experience, testing, development as one of the OpenStack open platform. Sina SAE Development manager Chenghui also obtained 350 individual member's support, successfully elected OpenStack Foundation one of 8 individual board members.

At the end of November, the chairman of the OpenStack Foundation's board of Trustees, Alan Clark, visited China to further promote the application and development of open source technology and the OpenStack project. During this period, the IBM KVM (Beijing) Center for Excellence was officially unveiled.

It is understood that the center is IBM in the field of open virtualization, the world's first center. The Center provides technical training to customers and partners, as well as sharing experience in implementing enterprise-class KVM solutions. These training can also be used to help salespeople better understand the advantages of KVM products. KVM-based solutions developed by partners such as IBM, Red hat and SuSE will also be shown in the center.

As you can see, mobile and cloud computing have become the most popular it hotspots today. A survey showed that more than 70% of the projects launched in 2011 were related to cloud computing and mobile Internet. The survey also showed an increasing trend for open source projects, with more than 60% per cent of respondents saying they accounted for more than 50% of open source code.

At the same time, the survey shows that the advantages of open source software is free, low-cost, high-quality. High quality is also the first time to be selected as the top three advantage.

From open source virtualization to open source cloud computing

Server virtualization is a vital part of deploying from a private cloud to a large public cloud environment. But a series of problems with it, make heterogeneous, remote resources integration becomes very difficult, it department also feel a headache.

As an open, kernel based virtualization technology, KVM is favored by enterprise users for its high performance, scalability, and security, while low-cost methods attract a large number of public cloud providers.

In May 2011, Red Hat United IBM, Red Hat, Intel, HP and other Open Virtualization Alliance (OVA) to help build a KVM ecosystem and help all the members of the ecosystem to open up the market. Today, OVA has more than 250 member companies, involving a number of mainstream virtualization, data centers and cloud solution providers, and China's Huawei and ZTE are included.

In addition to be able to avoid user lock-in, in the vast public cloud market, the high cost of proprietary software has been difficult to maintain the long-term development of users, open source platform is to become the choice of suppliers, around the application of KVM expansion is also increasingly in-depth. Among them, the OpenStack of one of open source projects is more famous than noise.

After more than four years of development, KVM is becoming an enterprise-class alternative to proprietary virtualization solutions. While the current market share of KVM is in single-digit numbers, open source is the right choice for users to deploy multiple virtualization software. Especially for the large Linux user community, the KVM has become the default choice.

Cooperative ecology maturing

The addition of Cloud Foundry has accelerated the popularization and application of open source technology in China.

As the emerging open source PAAs cloud platform, Cloud Foundry has been in China since early 2012, and in just a few months, the spring framework based on the Cloud Foundry has received wide attention and application in the field of enterprise application and Internet development in China.

Soon after, with the spring developer conference, VMware brought Springone to China. As these activities continue to evolve, a technology extension, developer and partner community ecosystem around open source PAAs is also rapidly gathering, bringing more choices and greater flexibility to users of cloudy platforms.

Over the past six months, including the launch of the early Sina SAE Ruby platform, in addition to sNDA Sheng, MO fear nets, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Fudan and other partners have also completed the Cloud Foundry based on the public cloud services built. In addition, Ufida Group is also actively trying to use Cloud Foundry to build enterprise private cloud platform.

In addition to support for the public cloud, Cloud Foundry can also be deployed on the vast majority of the mainstream ice based on the code can be used to do the internal private cloud platform, which also makes the Cloud foundry services to further expand the scope.

At the same time, an open source PaaS ecosystem based on Cloud Foundry is also evolving. Among them, including Internet enterprises, independent software vendors (ISVs), system integrators, technology start-ups, IDC operators and universities, many enterprises and institutions, are in different degrees of understanding, learning, evaluation and try to use Cloud Foundry to build public cloud or private cloud platform.

At the Springone conference, VMware announced the establishment of the China Cloud Foundry Open Alliance. The alliance has now attracted more than 20 partners. It can be foreseen that the landing and development of Cloud foundry in China is inseparable from the support of partners. VMware has established a dedicated Solution architect team to help and support partners better by accumulating and disseminating the architectural and operational dimensions of the PaaS platform.

The positive response given by partners will be an important boon for open cloud computing in China's sustainable development. The OpenStack Cloud platform has become an important part of cloud computing solutions for enterprise customers, as an example of China's Victory Day, one of the members of the Open Source Cloud Alliance. Through close cooperation with the Alliance community Forces, Huasheng Tiancheng in the promotion of OpenStack in the enterprise area to the landing, to provide customers with cloud services, but also the company in the enterprise customer practice in the results of positive feedback to the community.

With the participation and practice of leading enterprises and institutions in the fields of production, learning, research and application, coupled with the continuous maturation of the partnership ecosystem in this field, open source cloud computing has been widely landed and applied in China although there is still a long way to go, it should not be too far away.

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)