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Cloud Computing: OpenStack Hopes to Build a Challenge to Amazon
OpenStack, the Open Source software for building out cloud infrastructure, has recently passed the two year milestone. While OpenStack is not the only option for creating a cloud (alternatives include CloudStack, Eucalyptus and VMWare’s vCloud Director), it’s the one that seems to have significant momentum and been able to attract a lot of attention. But despite the early optimism, Amazon EC2 still dominates the cloud services market.
The OpenStack community is supported by AT&T, Canonical, HP, IBM, Red Hat, Cisco, Dell, NASA, Intel, AMD, Citrix, Rackspace, and RightScale. In all, as of July, there are 166 organizations contributing and supporting the project. The project was initially primarily controlled by RackSpace and NASA, but now control rests among a multi-vendor group called the OpenStack Foundation. The core of this product was originally developed by NASA, but NASA has dropped funding for the project. In April, Citrix also dropped out from OpenStack, moving instead to its own cloud offering called CloudStack.
Many say that as Linux has really transformed the Operating Systems space, OpenStack will similarly build a significant Open Source platform for the Cloud. Today OpenStack is used by businesses ranging from small to very large, researchers, service providers and global data centers.
The current release of OpenStack is called ‘Essex’, and another release is scheduled for late September, just before the OpenStack Summit will be held in October. That release will be called ‘Folsom’ and include a new feature called ‘Quantum‘ which is a network service for controlling network virtualization.
Joe Kelley, CEO of cloud-based service provider Infochimps in Austin, Texas told CRN that “Amazon offers a good cloud service, but there are a lot more options that people want to use to build private and public clouds. You can get OpenStack from HP, Rackspace and many others and build your cloud just as you want.”
