The three major Linux distributors will be showdown in the Cloud OS market

Linux operating system distributor SuSE says it is making some progress among cloud service providers as an optional platform for users to provide open source software operating systems. But at least one analyst says the market is still split between the three SuSE, Red hat and Canonical's Ubuntu distributors.

SuSE, released this week, shows that it works with 20 cloud service providers to provide Linux operating systems to 15,000 companies. Its main cloud service provider list includes Amazon Web Services, Dell, Intel, Verizon, and the closest Microsoft Azure.

In a news release this week, SuSE said the new addition of Microsoft Windows Azure to the SuSE cloud shows that SuSE's growing momentum is the de facto standard for the Enterprise Linux operating system provided by cloud services providers.

But James Staten, a cloud researcher at James Statten, a market research firm, said there were some challenges to suse forward. Fierce competition with red hat and canonical will play an important role in cloud computing. SuSE used to be a solution to a cloud service provider. Although this area may be growing, it is an emerging area for SuSE. The reputation of SuSE is built on the basis of reliability, safety and stability. These factors are more important to the enterprise. It is more important for traditional production applications than for local cloud applications. Local clouds tend to integrate reliability and stability into application design rather than relying on operating systems or basic infrastructure to provide these factors. Therefore, SuSE must publicize other capabilities to attract cloud-centric developers.

However, there are many opportunities. Linux is the leading operating system behind windows in cloud computing, Statten said. Therefore, there is enough market share for all three major manufacturers to compete. SuSE was developed in Germany in the middle of the 90. The European tradition makes it dominant in non-US markets. Red Hat controls the U.S. domestic market, including its offerings to cloud service providers.

However, SuSE is looking to take another action to compete with Red hat and canonical. SuSE currently has a beta version of the private cloud infrastructure deployment tool based on OpenStack code. This will further compete among three Open-source operating system distributors as Red Hat and canonical have been registered as partners in the OpenStack project. Red hat has its own OpenShift platform as a service, but has avoided IaaS (platform-service).

With open source operating system companies such as Red Hat, canonical and SuSE, it is important that these vendors provide users with a broader range of capabilities, Statten said.

In the past, Statten said, the focus of the product was to set up a single server to configure Linux. In a cloud computing environment, they need to help customers build an entire cloud architecture that uses a Linux operating system. What the three companies need to do is to acknowledge that their existing publishing methods are inappropriate and build some cloud deployment engines. These deployment engines can distribute OpenStack to a system pool, automatically set them up as a pool, illustrating the larger IaaS service rather than helping customers build a cloud server each time. (Compiled/Populus euphratica)

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)