Cloud computing and open source face-off

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Cloud vendors will use OSS as a stepping stone for their own platforms

Open source is not an complete option for a cloud computing effort right now; you can only use the software it provides, NOT use it directly as a service.

In contrast, you can go to Google, Amazon, Salesforce, and many others today and sign-up for their largely proprietary cloud offerings now (which extensively use open source internally). You can't do that with open source itself. You have to lease a building, fill it with servers, hire staff, install software, configure it, scale test it, etc. Or use a hosting service, which is similar but generally misses the "platform" aspects of cloud computing where elasticity, ease of use, enterprise capabilities, and architectural capabilities are usually much more limited.

Only after all that capex is done, can you start using it. In contrast, you can run your own software in one of the clouds above as fast as you can sign up and install it (especially Amazon's.)

My point is that not being a Platform-as-a-live-service is almost certainly going be a growing disadvantage since by itself OSS doesn't package up the full economies of scale I listed, just developer contributions and some R&D. In the end, open source risks being "used" by cloud vendors to build their new computing platforms instead of moving into the new cloud era as a first class citizen itself. Unless something is done, a few ideas for which I enumerate at the end.

I hope that helps.

Best,

Dion

Posted by: dionhinchcliffe   Posted on: 06/15/09 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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