Open source cloud fight how can suppliers get top?

When looking for open source cloud computing service providers, companies with strong development capabilities or specific business applications tend to routinely avoid commercial cloud computing service providers. Open source cloud computing platforms such as Eucalyptus, OpenStack and abiquo are expected to succeed in building private cloud computing opportunities for companies.

But some problems remain, such as how the Open-source cloud services provider can reflect its value. Who will pull the top? Can the Eucalyptus system win in the brutal competition with OpenStack? Will OpenStack be able to get rid of the old project hype and launch a cloud-computing product with a commercial nature? Will Red Hat be able to further define its ambiguous cloud computing strategy? So what about the company of irrelevant virtualization management like Abiquo? Who's going to be the focus of the world As the darling of the Corporate private cloud computing implementation plan?

Abiquo

Abiquo is an Open-source software company that provides enterprise cloud computing products that allow customers to quickly build and complete management of cloud computing (including private cloud, public cloud, or hybrid cloud) for automation and governance, self service, multiple stacks, and multiple management programs. Abiquo integrates enterprise-installed hypervisor and storage management tools, supports all major management programs, and allows you to manage virtualized infrastructure through a single "Operation Window". You don't have to switch between multiple user interfaces.

According to the Forrester Research company, Abiquo is among the world's top 15 private cloud computing products suppliers, and other suppliers include BMC, CA, HP, IBM, Microsoft and WMware.

Canonical

Over the past few years, Canonical has teamed up with the Open source cloud computing project Eucalyptus to create the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC). However, in February of 2011, canonical company joined OpenStack, and soon later turned to partnering with OpenStack to develop its Ubuntu cloud computing base technology. OpenStack is now working on the core of Ubuntu's cloud computing, and Ubuntu has become a leading host and customer operating system in HP's OpenStack cloud computing.

According to canonical company, these changes will not affect the normal release based on Eucalyptus UEC. Eucalyptus will still be available for download and supported by canonical company. For customers already deployed based on Eucalyptus UEC private cloud computing, they will be maintained until April 2015. Ubuntu will provide tools to automate migration from Eucalyptus uec to OpenStack UEC.

Eucalyptus system

Eucalyptus systems offers Open-source Eucalyptus cloud computing Project code that can be commercialized in mass production. It also provides business plug-ins, including support for wmware management programs. Support for KVM and Xen is also integrated into the code for the Eucalyptus project, and it also supports the Amazon EC2 API.

Like Red Hat and other Open-source cloud computing providers, Eucalyptus systems companies charge annual fees, including technical support and access to the company's business Plug-ins. The Eucalyptus System Company's Plug-ins provide corporate customers with the ability to bind VMware, KVM, and Xen to a single cloud structure, while ensuring compatibility with the existing cloud-compatible Amazon flexible Computing Cloud (EC2).

The main advantage of the Eucalyptus System Company's open source offerings is its low-cost, installed in production environment, support for VMware and Amazon EC2, and the free migration of business users to achieve workload between Amazon EC2 Public cloud computing and Eucalyptus Private cloud computing.

OpenStack

OpenStack is an open source community that is shared by technicians, developers, researchers, and businesses with resources, technology, and ideas to develop open source cloud computing products. One of the main goals advocated by OpenStack is to eliminate the fear of limited customer-specific manufacturers. Currently, OpenStack is an open-source platform that is overly advertised for building public and private clouds.

NASA and Rackspace were the first supporters of OpenStack. Now, a large number of industry giants, such as Cisco, Dell, HP and Intel, have expressed support for OpenStack. As mentioned earlier, canonical company regards Eucalyptus as its core cloud computing technology that supports OpenStack. Microsoft is also committed to participating in OpenStack, which supports Hyper-V integration.

OpenStack API modules are compatible with other APIs, such as Amazon EC2, Xen, and KVM. You can use related tools to implement a virtual server migration from OpenStack to Amazon EC2.

OpenStack calls for companies with technical expertise to look for Low-cost, open source development options. A large number of companies, including Rackspace, Citrix and Mirantis, have developed cost support programs for OpenStack users.

Manufacturers such as HP see OpenStack as a platform for building public cloud computing and private cloud computing. NASA uses OpenStack to build its own private cloud computing. Rackspace uses OpenStack objectstorage in its cloud-computing storage platform, while Cisco builds a network as a service (NaaS) based on OpenStack.

Red Hat Co.

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) product cloudforms and Platform as a service (PaaS) product openshift are Red Hat company launched the cloud computing products. Clouforms gives corporate users the ability to create and manage private cloud computing environments. Red Hat Company claims that Cloudforms allows users to manage applications and virtual servers.

OpenShift can create an application deployment environment. Red Hat Company believes that OpenShift is more portable than other PAAs products because it allows customers to deploy to other cloud computing vendor environments using the Deltacloud API (also an Open-source project).

Open Source Cloud computing products

Red Hat is by far the largest of many open source cloud computing companies, but most of the big vendors, such as HP, Cisco and Intel, Support OpenStack. OpenStack is also expected to become a standard, making mixed cloud computing a reality and reducing the adverse effects of a single vendor. Many of the vendors, organizations and businesses with powerful technology-running teams are key users of OpenStack.

A disadvantage of OpenStack is that Rackspace dominates its development. But this could be a contentious issue, as some other vendors are already involved and have announced that OpenStack is the basis for their cloud computing products.

OpenStack becomes the basis for mass production commercialization of the cloud, which takes about 18 months, while the Eucalyptus system's products and their plug-ins have been used in production mode. If HP's OpenStack cloud computing products are not successful, the development of OpenStack will be affected.

The installation base of Red Hat company's cloud computing products is getting more attention, but its popularity may not exceed its installation base. The company is growing rapidly and is expected to add about 1000 employees next year, most of whom will be working in its cloud computing research department.

However, the Red Hat Company's cloud computing strategy and products are open source, so it seems a bit confusing. The number of users navigating open source projects to create private cloud computing can be confusing, and the company has never had a coherent picture of its cloud strategy.

Once viewed as a great potential dark horse, eucalyptus will be eclipsed by OpenStack's resplendent. However, if you have an environment that uses VMware vsphere ESXi, KVM, or Xen for virtualization, the Eucalyptus system and its business plug-ins are a good choice for implementing private cloud computing. In addition, if you want to migrate workloads based on Eucalyptus Private cloud computing and Amazon EC2, then it's a better choice. If your company is an enterprise designed to create private cloud computing, then the Eucalyptus system is ready.

Canonical from Eucalyptus to OpenStack as the basic technology for its cloud computing infrastructure Ubuntu. While non-cloud users have a unique interest in Ubuntu, their companies still have trouble producing cloud computing. If the hype over OpenStack eventually makes it a commercial cloud of mass production, and becomes the real industry standard, it is as luck lucky for canonical and Ubuntu/openstack.

It's not appropriate to think about Canonical's cloud computing success, eucalyptus systems and red Hat companies rely on OpenStack's success. If OpenStack disappoint the hype, the Eucalyptus system and Red Hat Company will be the biggest winners. Because of the unpredictable factors involved in management programs, stacks, and so on, Abiquo's success does not depend on OpenStack success or failure.

Bill Claybrook is a marketing research analyst with over 35 years of experience in the computer industry, with decades of experience in Linux, open source, and cloud computing. Bill is the Boston Aderdeen Group's Linux and open source research director, and Novell's competitiveness analyst, Linux marketing Manager. He recently became president of Red Hat Company's new Honghe market research and direction. He has a doctorate in computer science.

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)