OpenStack Board Member Says Adding VMware Was a Mistake 64
BButlerNWW writes "VMware is in OpenStack now, but not everyone thinks that's such a good idea. One member of the newly created OpenStack Board of Directors says allowing VMware into the open source cloud project was a 'huge mistake' that could damage the project's market perception. Boris Renski is co-founder of OpenStack integration consultancy Mirantis and he says every enterprise he's worked with so far has been interested in OpenStack because they view it as an alternative to VMware. The board's vote earlier this month has now muddled the differences, he says. 'If OpenStack isn't an alternative to VMware, then what the hell is it?' Renski says."
Re:Answer (Score:2, Interesting)
That's over-simplified. Are you familiar with the phrase "Nobody ever got fired for going with [large vendor]?"
Re:What is openstack? (Score:4, Interesting)
Your explanation is in the right direction but there's an essential part missing. What makes Openstack a cloud platform? It's a cloud because it can run cloud applications. These are ~ new type of applications that are aware they're running in a cloud. Just like classic enterprise apps deployed in an app server, cloud applications are coded against an API, provided by Openstack. The API is designed so that the app can benefit from various services, like structured data storage, but it's also designed to enforce apps that can scale well, with little changes, to very large number of servers. Current apps can't do that in a cost effective manner and that's why a cloud of applications is something that is very valuable for someone looking to build things like the next Youtube, GMail or Dropbox but without Google's unlimited money and human resources supply.
All that the current VMware toolchain can provide is a cloud of virtual machines. You would be hard pressed to find a whole datacenter running on VMware while also running a single application in all the virtual machines.
Amongst almost all the other cloud platforms currently on the rise, Openstack is a darling because it promises to have an open API for those cloud apps. This is of tremendous importance to avoid the mother of all vendor lockins. Currently you can't have an app built for one cloud platform and then move it to another cloud. If you build an app for Microsoft's Azure cloud platform you know you won't be able to move it to Google's App Engine or Amazon's Elastic Cloud without running the huge risk of trying to rewrite the app. With an app running on Openstack, you could run it on your own servers for a while and then move it to some Openstack cloud provider. And if you are not happy with that provider after a while, you can switch to another one, etc.