Microsoft is joining OpenStack, the open cloud initiative started by Rackspace and NASA, the U.S. federal space agency.
This is a big deal for OpenStack, which this week unveiled “Austin,” it’s first official release. It’s also a pivotal moment for the cloud marketplace, aligning the Redmond giant with the open cloud effort. It also puts VMware in the spotlight. It is well known that VMware leads the virtualization market. The company is in fierce competition with Microsoft and Citrix. The companies have an alliance that has focused on targeting VMware’s dominance.
VMware, for its part, has recently announced vCloud Director, an extended cloud platform that connects a virtual data center environment to a public cloud. VMware is teaming up with service providers that have built out cloud platforms. These platforms are built on VMware technologies.
OpenStack has a similar offering. It’s designed as a cloud infrastructure that companies can uses to extend from their data center environments.
Microsoft is joining OpenStack through the integration of Hyper-V, its virtualization technology. OpenStack will benefit significantly with the addition of Microsoft’s Hyper-V. Most enterprise customers have a mixed stack. They run Microsoft technologies and technology from other vendors. Without Microsoft support, companies would be less able to take advantage of what OpenStack offers.
Cloud.com and Anso Labs provided the support to help Microsoft bring its technology to the project.
Cloud.com may be the big winner in all of this. According to Krishnan Subramanian, the company has established itself in the cloud service provider market but its place in the enterprise has not been that significant. This deal should help speed Cloud.com’s adoption.
As for VMware, Subramanian makes the point that it may force the virtualization giant to also throw its support behind OpenStack:
“If VMware shows the same willingness as Microsoft and Citrix in cooperating with OpenStack, it will be a big win for OpenStack. We will have to wait and see what happens there.”
We agree. OpenStack has just made a huge leap. OpenStack has done what it had to do when it launched the open cloud initiative this summer. It has run hard to get as many partners as possible. Microsoft joining OpenStack is a culmination of that initial sprint.
