OpenStack Development movement encounters growth fission

Building a cloud-deployed Open-source software project OpenStack was started two years ago as a collaborative project between Rackspace and NASA. The project now includes more than 150 companies and more than 2000 contributing developers. Rackspace also reached a new milestone this week, launching the fifth release of the OpenStack software, code-named "Essex". Many OpenStack supporters say the new release has elevated the project to a new level of sophistication, compatibility with other cloud providers, and ease of use.

But divisions are beginning to emerge.

The first divisive incident was at the end of March. At the time, Eucalyptus, the Open-source software project that made the private cloud, announced an agreement with Amazon Web services to expand interoperability between the eucalyptus private cloud and the Amazon Web Service's public cloud services. The move is clearly to support an Open-source software project supported by the market leader Amazon Web services. But the project is not OpenStack.

Another big event this week came from Gartner analyst Dia Liang Lydia Leong as "explosive": Jie announced that it would introduce the "Cloudstack" cloud production platform to the Apache Software Foundation, Create an open source software model that competes with OpenStack. Jie the Cloudstack platform in a deal that bought cloud.com 200 million dollars last year.

The attack on both sides began. On the day Jie announced the news, OpenStack officials fought back and belittled the action, publicizing the momentum, strength and diversity of the OpenStack movement.

So where does all this information make OpenStack? Proponents of the project say they will continue to do the project. However, some analysts believe that the message will significantly change the open source software cloud game. James Staten, a Forrester analyst, James Starn that this will certainly put greater pressure on OpenStack.

Starn said the previous version of Essex, released last autumn, code-named "Diablo" OpenStack release was not impressive. Many people have questions about when they can deploy the software. According to Forrester's survey, One-third of the companies said their budget had the money to deploy the cloud this year. They don't want to wait. They are in preparation for implementation. OpenStack officials were optimistic about Essex. But, Starn says, the real test of OpenStack's progress and market position is judged by the applications of companies and cloud service providers.

"This is a great release," said Josh McKenty, one of OpenStack's co-founder Choshi Mckenty. I think that one of the things that we've raised the level of is the level of integration between projects so far, and it does achieve better seamless operation. "McEntee created its own piston cloud computing company, selling enterprise-class cloud systems and technical support based on OpenStack software.

Essex does have a lot of improvements compared to previous releases. OpenStack is subdivided into a series of projects called "core" projects. This means that the OpenStack community believes their progress has reached a certain level of maturity. Other projects are in the "hatching" state, meaning that these projects are still being developed. Prior to the release of Essex, these core projects included a computing power project code-named "Nova", a storage object project code-named "Swift" and an Image service project code-named "Glance".

Essex the two hatching projects to a core state: the identification service code-named "Keystone" and the user interface code-named "Deepwater". These features allow a user certificate to be used for all aspects of development and a common user interface for the entire deployment. These two advances mean improved ease of use and interoperability.

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)