Impressions of the OpenStack Hong Kong Summit: The cloud of traditional IT manufacturers

First of all, "Wild hope" here is an exotic word, represents a kind of ambition and desire, and when I see the OpenStack Hong Kong Summit Exhibition Board of the manufacturer logo, and the OpenStack foundation of the main members of the list, it will naturally appear in my mind this word, This is also the peak to me a prominent impression, today we will talk about the traditional it giant cloud wild look.

OpenStack 2013 Hong Kong Peak Display Board of manufacturers logo, traditional It manufacturers are clearly more eye-catching

What is a traditional it factory? You can think of two things, these are the industry's leading IT solution providers, in their area of expertise can be said Zuba, but the traditional word in the former, also means that their advantages in the traditional enterprise IT market, and in the emerging it field, they may not be the big manufacturers, or not as before the scenery. In the OpenStack 2013 Hong Kong Peak Exhibition board, we can see the most eye-catching logo, there is such a figure, such as Redhat, IBM, HP, Cisco, Dell and so on, and if you open the OpenStack foundation of the main members of the list, you will find these traditional it manufacturers Levels are also considerable.

OpenStack Foundation of the main manufacturers and institutions members of the list

In the OpenStack Foundation, RedHat, IBM, HP, SUSE, these familiar names in the traditional enterprise IT market appear on the highest Platinum membership list, while Cisco and Dell appear in gold-level membership. These traditional enterprise-level IT companies are so positive to OpenStack, on the one hand for the latter brought a higher popularity, on the other hand also let people lament the rapid changes in the industry. I think these traditional giants are doing this, it is because each of them has their own ambitions and desires in the cloud, but the chances of leaving them in the real world are few, whether they are dependant or to gain as much autonomy as possible, and OpenStack clearly brings them new hope in the latter possibility.

Looking at the current cloud world, the main technology stack, which can be considered the core component of the cloud infrastructure, is clear – a self-contained, unique Amazon AWS with VMware vcloud from virtualization. There is the Microsoft System (Windows Azure+windows Server+system Center), which is in the same vein as windows, and there are cloudstack from Si Jie's acquisition and open source evolution (in some ways, Cloudstack is not quite the same as OpenStack's open source route, because the model of the product's own unified suite, Cloudstack does not evolve by Project mix, but similar to AWS and Vcloud. And the current main propulsion company is still si Jie, so some people say it is half open source, but anyway, it has become one of the mainstream cloud stack. These traditional IT companies and the leading manufacturers of these stacks have more or less cooperation, and some manufacturers have tried to build their own cloud stacks, but the end result is bleak. As a result, these traditional enterprise-class It vendors are significantly less influential in the cloud era than those of mainstream cloud stacks. They only take the part of these stacks without the possibility of affecting them, but OpenStack has the opportunity to radically change their status and create more lucrative opportunities for future competition.

Redhat is an important force in the x86 server market, its in the Linux domain can say of course eldest brother, in the virtualization, storage and application platform has very deep attainments, and therefore it hopes to build its own cloudforms cloud platform, and dominate the market, but has not been any improvement, Looking at VMware and Microsoft, Si Jie gradually further away, it also gradually towards OpenStack, and in April 2012 became the OpenStack Foundation Platinum member. After that, Redhat began to make full efforts to become the OpenStack Foundation's most active force, and launched its own OpenStack distribution.

Unlike Redhat, IBM has its own strengths as Powersystems minicomputer and Zenterprise Mainframe, while the x86 sector, which is respected by cloud computing, does not have its own authoritative leadership technology, as well as using VMware or Microsoft's cloud stack (although Redhat has made significant progress on KVM, but it is just a low-level virtualization technology that is the tip of the iceberg for cloud computing. In order to promote its dominant powersystems in cloud computing, the Powercloud (based on its own virtualization platform POWERVM) is spared, but the results are not ideal. As Powersystems's sales plummeted (in the 2012 fiscal year, Q1 began to be flat in the year to 2013, Q3 fell year-on-year 38%), IBM also wanted to have the status of its traditional it boss in the x86 platform-dominated cloud computing field, So also basically in powersystems sales reached the peak, began to decline, in April 2012 with Redhat together became the OpenStack Foundation Platinum members. At this point, embarked on a comprehensive embrace OpenStack road.

IBM in OpenStack different versions of the input of the comparison, you can see in the latest Havana version of the development process, IBM directly involved in the 380 people, is the first half of 2012 just become a Platinum member when 7 times times, it is obvious that IBM to openstack attention to the degree

Hewlett-Packard is relatively thorough, it also has its own UNIX minicomputer (Itanium), but has long been not an opponent of Powersystems, and in the x86 field has a voice in the cloud and virtualization technology than IBM still worse, so in the face of the cloud era of change, HP is also a quick guide OpenStack , in April 2012 with Redhat, IBM became the OpenStack Foundation Platinum member. Then, in May 2012, the HP Cloud service, based on the OpenStack architecture, was the first public cloud that the traditional it giants used to explicitly build OpenStack. By June 2013, at its North American user conference, HP had released its own OpenStack release--cloud OS. It can be seen that in this area the speed is not worse than IBM, or even more.

At the peak of Hong Kong, Redhat, IBM and Hewlett-Packard, the platinum members, became the main protagonists of the first two morning keynote speeches, but in its content, Hewlett-Packard wasted a good opportunity to publicize its position in the OpenStack world, and Redhat brought us 2014 years of OpenStack development ideas, highlighting the true character of the leader (in the subsequent Outlook will be mentioned), IBM from its own actual situation, for us to understand how IBM will use the OpenStack overall plan, I think it is necessary to introduce here, It can be said to represent a traditional it king of the latest cloud computing vision, you can see how traditional it will be integrated with the future cloud.

OpenStack will be an important foundation for IBM's "Software Definition Environment" (Soe,software tabbed Environnement), and SOE is the core of IBM infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

IBM and China's Jiangsu Taihu Cloud Computing Information Technology Co., Ltd., the Scic cloud service, which can be seen as the prototype of the IBM cloud stack based on OpenStack operation, we can clearly see that it has included minicomputer and x86 server on the underlying hardware level, It means IBM will be more focused on hardware-level integration of the cloud platform, together into the OpenStack management framework

On top of SCIC, IBM will also build platform-level services and be scheduled by IBM's SmartCloud Automatic Collaboration manager, where the OpenStack infrastructure level will also be integrated into the overall automated synergy framework, so how to base the OpenStack platform To play IBM more value, it must be the blue giant's most dedicated direction

Overall, IBM sees OpenStack as an important coordinator, responsible for the unified management of IBM's computing, storage, and networking equipment, and the delivery of hardware resources up to IBM's application platform Resource planning management. Here, we do not see Powersystems and X86 or Zenterprise, and IBM has always stressed that the powercloud is not a global concept. IBM now wants to use the OpenStack framework to consolidate and manage all of its hardware assets, and the VMware and Microsoft solutions do not support IBM's own hardware (Powersystems and Zenterprise) in the past due to a lack of x86 related accumulation. So in the integration of management performance is not satisfactory, OpenStack will greatly complement this short board, and for IBM on the above to provide more value-added services to lay a good foundation.

Next April, the new version of OpenStack, code-named Icehouse, will be released, which also brings with it the latest features associated with IBM

In order to make better use of OpenStack, it is necessary to add features related to their own hardware, which is what IBM is doing. Next April, the new version of Openstack--icehouse will arrive as scheduled, and IBM is likely to have its own release, or a new solution based on Icehouse, but it is certain that IBM has added its own key features to Icehouse. It also gives OpenStack the ability to support Powersystems enterprise applications, which is a winning result for IBM and OpenStack--openstack has long been considered unreliable and stable, while Powersystems is also increasingly marginalized by the current mainstream IT environment, but the combination of the two makes the former more robust and provides a more feasible way to integrate the latter.

In conclusion, we can see from IBM's introduction that traditional it vendors face OpenStack, have OpenStack vision, these traditional it vendors have a huge "historical wealth", and open source, flexible OpenStack provides a tool to effectively integrate them into the new environment, Thus provided the conditions for these "historical wealth" to glow a new era of light. As a generation of hegemony, IBM's brilliant no one can, but in the face of the cloud era of the tide, and then the hard rock is not the enemy of the vast trend. These traditional it vendors, for a variety of reasons, do not have a leading position in their x86 environment. But OpenStack's arrival has also become a new dawn for them. Of course, not all of the traditional manufacturers, who also have no deep influence on the x86 cloud stack, will choose OpenStack, such as Oracle, which is still unclear even if it buys OpenStack affiliate NIMBULA. But we all said that all the roads lead to Rome, no matter which way to choose, the goal is one--do not want to lose the initiative in the cloud era, look at other people's face, or to work for others, I think this is each before the x86 cloud era frustrated traditional giants common "wild hope"!

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)