The battle between open source and patented products in cloud computing is increasingly fierce

The debate between familiar open source software and proprietary IT products now seems to be unfolding in the cloud, with mutual attacks among major manufacturers increasingly fierce. The latest round of controversy took place a few weeks ago. At the time, Jie announced that it would introduce its cloudstack cloud-building platform to the Apache Software Foundation, creating a model for competing with OpenStack. Until then, OpenStack has been gaining momentum in the open source cloud sector. Although the move was initially seen as a competition with OpenStack, the two companies have recently targeted the common enemy: VMware.

A VMware executive has published a blog that calls rivals "ugly sisters", comparing VMware to the Prince Charming and Cinderella who eloped with users. On the same day that the blog was published, one of the top executives of the Vpumpkin wrote a blog file titled "Vcloud or", and expected VMware to die in the hands of users who chose the open source cloud deployment model. Jie's Pede Urander (Peder Ulander) said in a blog that the only thing that VMware and Cinderella had in common was the image that you created in earnest that was disappearing before your eyes.

Rackspace, one of the biggest supporters of the OpenStack project, also made a clear distinction, but this time it was targeting Amazon's Web services. Rackspace CEO Rannam Nepil (Lanham Napier) said in an interview that Amazon's proprietary system has a client lock-in. We believe that OpenStack will be the technical standard, our excellent technical support will be the service standard. We are trying to create a better service.

James Staten, a Forrester Research analyst, Ms Starn that there has been an open and proprietary product debate in the IT field. We are clearly in the middle of this debate. The de facto standard in an industry "scares people", prompting some to consider alternative criteria. Starn says the controversy seems to be erupting. In the area of cloud computing, Amazon's Web Services API (application programming Interface) is becoming a de facto standard, becoming the center of contention among vendors.

But what does this mean for customers?

In both respects, the debate between Open-source and proprietary software has never been a black-and-white issue, Starn said. Open vendors say their users have more flexibility and they allow users to push open source software code in ways they like. Proprietary vendors sell stability and ease of management to users.

Domicity Cloud Analyst Mark Brain (Marc Brien) said proprietary cloud products are now more advanced. In the medium term, a business 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 huge space. But as Open-source software quickly gained momentum, they found that their market space was shrinking.

Zenoss, a cloud technology expert and blogger Floyd Stripling (Floyd strimling), says competition is actually beneficial to users. Competition will push manufacturers to innovate in technology and reduce prices. This is beneficial to the end user. VMware, for example, has now extended its vcloud network to more than 100 providers.

Stripling said cloud providers were attacking each other as they did every day of the U.S. presidential election. These attacks will be more intense over the next few weeks. Stripling said that although we do not pay attention to every day of malicious attacks, but we will bear the consequences. If open source cloud vendors can significantly weaken the market share of VMware and Amazon Web Services, this will create new opportunities for cloud service providers to provide services around open source products, just as Red Hat does with the Linux kernel. But VMware and Amazon Web Services now have an unshakable market lead.

Finally, according to Scripps, customers typically have two priorities: make the product or service work, or choose not to use the product or service if they are not functioning. The user's desire for portability is the reason why he sees the cloud as a legitimate substitute for proprietary products. It is not enough to match a management program between a local site and a public cloud provider to transfer data between cloud providers. He believes that many users need the real interoperability of workloads and storage. Open source providers say they have the ability to allow portability. VMware says it has a provider ecosystem that provides user choice.

What has been the outcome of this debate? The big companies that should be paying attention are still the market leader Amazon Web services, according to the company. Amazon Web Services recently signed a protocol that allows Open-source private cloud vendors Eucalyptus to make its APIs compatible with Amazon Web services. Stripling says he is interested in seeing how Amazon Web services continues to recognise that private cloud compatibility is moving forward. (Compiled/Populus euphratica)

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)