Cloud Computing: Did OpenStack Let VMware Into The Henhouse?

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babbcock.

OpenStack is the main initiative contesting VMware’s growing dominance in running the enterprise cloud. OpenStack has both the momentum as an expanding open source project, and the right governance with the new OpenStack Foundation. It should be able to pose as a long-range alternative.

OpenStack provides the building blocks of cloud computing: compute, network, and storage management, with virtual machine provisioning built in. It has a monitoring/reporting system through its Horizon dashboard, plus image management in Glance. But it must compete with Amazon-compatible open source code from Eucalyptus Systems, and a more polished, OpenStack-like package in Apache’s CloudStack, contributed by Citrix Systems…

OpenStack is off to a great start, but it will need something else as well: the ongoing commitment of many talented developers, including independent open source developers as well as those sponsored by large vendors. The momentum that it enjoys at the moment is from the backing of large companies. They’re an impressive lot: Hewlett-Packard, AT&T, IBM, Rackspace, Dell, Intel, Cisco Systems, Juniper, Brocade, PayPal, and Yahoo, among others. But that backing is not enough…

Read more from the source @ http://www.informationweek.com/development/open-source/did-openstack-let-vmware-into-the-henhou/240009337