In the past few days we have seen two new initiatives that involve companies known for their open-source roots.
Red Hat announced it is open-sourcing its Deltacloud API. Eucalyptus is teaming with New Scale, rPath and MomentumSI to provide a self-serve cloud deployment service.
Earlier this summer, Rackspace open-sourced its cloud infrastructure and teamed with NASA to create OpenStack.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the clear leader in the cloud infrastructure market. To counter its dominance, open-sourcing technology or forming alliances is about the only choice for these companies.
That is unless you decide to align with Amazon like Eucalyptus is doing. Eucalyptus uses the AWS API for companies to set up their own private clouds.
That move mixes up the game a bit. Eucalyptus CEO Marten Myckos believes that AWS is now the standard. But there’s more to this story, too. Eucalyptus had previously been aligned with NASA before the U.S. aerospace agency decided to build its own cloud computing infrastructure. As The Register reports, the scuttlebutt has been that NASA dropped Eucalyptus because the service did not scale:
“But Mickos says that such rumors should be laid to rest – though he acknowledges that the platform may not be appropriate for the sort of epic cloud NASA intends to build. Eucalyptus is meant for use within the enterprise.”
NASA is now aligned with Rackspace on OpenStack.
The moves in the market illustrates Amazon’s commanding lead. Rackpsace and Red Hat are going the open-source route to make gains. Eucalyptus still acts like an open-source provider but for a few exceptions. For one, it has a commercial offering that leverages the Amazon API.
That’s a twist.
