Open source projects roll into cloud market under AWS’ shadow

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Beth Pariseau.

Slowly but surely, open source projects are gaining significant momentum in the world of cloud computing. While a proprietary cloud — Amazon Web Services — looms large as the universally acknowledged 800-pound gorilla in the cloud market, other big vendors are throwing their weight behind open source cloud orchestration tools like OpenStack and Citrix CloudPlatform, as well as open-source infrastructure automation tools that come in handy for clouds, such as Puppet and Chef.

Take, for example, Verizon Terremark’s April announcement that it will invest in the open source Xen Project for server virtualization and Apache CloudStack for cloud orchestration. Or Cisco’s founding of the Open Daylight Project, an open-source project based around software-defined networking…

Or VMware’s public pledges to work with OpenStack, which is not to mention their multiple millions invested in Puppet Labs; VMware joined a roster of OpenStack collaborators last year that also includes HP, IBM, Red Hat and Rackspace, among others. Vendors getting in on open source projects are partially hedging their bets, said Glenn O’Donnell, an analyst with Forrester Research. But, in cases like OpenStack, “the community is big enough they’d be fools not to jump on the bandwagon,” he said…

Read more from the source @ http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/news/2240185214/Open-source-projects-roll-into-cloud-market-under-AWS-shadow