Guest post by Open source history suggests vendor-backed Eucalyptus will ultimately win out over the foundation-based Open Stack as the open source cloud platform of choice for IT going forward. ‘History has shown that when an open source project is dealing with a valuable layer of the software stack, that project has tended to be controlled by a single vendor that can directly make money from the project,’ Rodrigues writes. ‘History also shows that when an open source project is dealing with a commodity layer of the software stack, the project tends to be controlled by a foundation.’ The question then boils down to whether cloud platforms are indeed a valuable layer, and thus directly monetizable, as Red Hat proved with Linux, or are they a commodity layer, like Apache HTTP Server or Eclipse. Ultimately, Rodrigues believes that the private cloud will prove to be a valuable component of the IT stack, thereby favoring Eucalyptus’ AWS-based private cloud platform.
I read the summary, it sounds like someone is making an opinion based on opinions…. but that is just my opinion.
This is what it sounds like to me…
If it is a valuable layer, history has shown (with 1 or 2 products) that vendor-backed wins.
If it is a commodity layer, history has shown (with 1 or 2 products) that foundation-backed wins.
This sounds like something easy to say after the fact. But nobody knows whether they are valuable or not… so we wait and see whether the vendor-backed solution wins and say it is valuable; if the foundation wins they say it wasn’t valuable.
What nonsense
Yeah, I don’t see the point of this article. Is there like some large war going on between Eucalyptus and Openstack?
There’s a lot of Marten Mickos says this and that and little of anyone else.
To be honest, this sound a lot like “Marten Mickos asked me to push Eucalyptus and I agreed”.
Yes, there is, and Eucalyptus is losing ground fast.
I think it’s great that an open source cloud platform exists. But where is the data going to live? And who guards/protects it? So, really, what we’re talking about here is less about PLATFORM and more about SERVICE. And, in that world, vendor-backed solutions almost always win.
The word “private” didnt give it away? Obviously data in a private cloud can live in your own datacenter.
Also, Eucalyptus is not AWS-based, it just implements the AWS API. That’s entirely different from being based on AWS. Might want to correct that in the news item.
History suggests that the product with the snappiest name typically prevails. This means a name that is short, easy to remember, easy to spell, and which carries the fewest negative associations (figuring out that ‘Lumia’ means whore in Spain probably goes beyond the scope of most product research).
So let’s have a look at Eucalyptus vs OpenStack:
– Eucalyptus is toxic, it is found in cough drops and toothpaste, its natural enemy is the Koala bear, and the witch in Paulus the Woodgnome is named after it. Hmmm.
– OpenStack is a compound word, and so far most OpenWhatever products haven’t exactly managed to set the world on fire (I’ll include -Office and -BSD), but Stack sounds like a lot, and money.
Really, both names are less than ideal and that’s just starting with the fact that they’re too long. My prediction: OpenStack will at some point be renamed Stack, and win.
Edited 2011-11-05 07:31 UTC
Well, we have Apple and Macintosh, Windows, all very common and mundane, so I don’t think Eucalyptus will go far but perhaps if they renamed it to myCloud and OpenStack to myStack they’d both do well ( or at least, better )
The best software stack will win on technical or economic merits.