back to article OpenStack's success depends on IBM and HP's tech queens

OpenStack is the IT industry, sans Amazon, Google and Microsoft, coming together to craft an open-source cloud OS alternative to ... wait for it ... Amazon, Google and Microsoft. It is because the terrible trio's public clouds threaten to eat the enterprise data centre – supplying the IT industry's lunch, and dinner, and tea …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Several things:

    1) There's a general consensus that lots of workloads will never go into the public cloud. Whether or not Openstack becomes the de facto standard for in-datacentre computing (and I'd think VMWare would be one of many who'd have something to say about that idea) the idea that public cloud will just sweep away the entire ecosystem of enterprise vendors and resellers away is absurd, however much headway it's making with the low hanging fruit.

    2) NASA's leadership in Openstack was actually a key factor in their leaving. Suddenly all of the software engineers who'd had anything to do with it were headhunted for big salary increases or left to start up companies. A huge disruption and cost increase in a non-core area of operation would cause any enterprise to look for off-the-shelf alternatives.

    Whatever the public vs private economics for NASA given the datasets it works with, the question of whether it had any business continuing to lead in a market that isn't core is different from the question of whether more mature and vendor supported private cloud options are economical now.

    3) I've never seen anyone outside the press talk about Google's cloud. I'm sure people are using the free credits thrown at them to try things out, but is it really gaining any traction?

    Similarly, I don't see Microsoft as wholly hostile to the wider market. Azure is definitely getting traction, but the overwhelming majority of Microsoft's revenue still relies on the people this article places in the opposite corner.

    That means AWS is really in the driving seat on public cloud and it's a formidable competitor, but I predict that the more it tries to expand to attract traditional enterprise computing workloads the harder it will find the going. Private datacentres are here to stay for well over half of the compute market (at the very least) and lots of the software as a service apps which spring up to fill gaps will grow to a scale where public cloud isn't a fit for them either (see Salesforce, for instance).

    The really interesting thing with AWS is not really the size it's grown to (though it's impressive) but the sheer scale of mindshare and disruption that it's acheived despite being far from the monopoly position that Microsoft acheived on the desktop.

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      "Similarly, I don't see Microsoft as wholly hostile to the wider market."

      Then you haven't been paying attention.

      Microsoft is "mobile first, cloud first". This means "give us your subscription money". No, you can't own things. No you can't extract maximum value for dollar. No, small businesses can't be profitable. The bully will beat you up by the bike racks unless you hand over your lunch money today, tomorrow and every day, forever.

      But if you pay real attention, it's not just the end customer Microsoft is hostile do. It may be "mobile first, cloud first", but it's "customers last, partners last, developers last and staff last". Everyone that isn't forking over a subscription is an unperson. This is Microsoft.

      And in an age where hardware will gleefully give you ten solid years of service life, and for 80% of businesses there is absolutely no reason to upgrade every two or three years, that absolutely is "hostile to the wider market".

  2. Shannon Jacobs

    Financial models matter

    Good software? Nice idea, but you're much better off with a good financial model, even if your software is gawdawful. Why are you looking a Microsoft? I didn't say anything.

    My concrete suggestion for OSS is a kind of 'charity share brokerage' system to fund the features and software that people want. Actually, the idea of "features and software" should be generalized to "projects", which could include support, too. (Hey if enough people are willing to pay for an old version running on their old computer, that should be supported, too.)

    In some ways this idea is basically like Kickstarter or IndieGoGo, but I think that they FAIL for the lack of project management. The scope of a project needs to be clearly defined, and of course the required resources should be considered in advance, along with a budget and a schedule, but I think the most important missing feature of existing crowd-sourcing systems is SUCCESS criteria. When you donate to a project, you should know what success will look like, and after you have pledged all of the money you wanted to start with, you should be able to look over the results and actually see if you've made the world better.

    Oh well. Pie in the sky. The actual proposal described in this article looks like another repetition of history, and I don't care if it's repeating as a tragedy or farce this particular time.

  3. geoff61

    X/Open and Windows NT

    Your knowledge of UNIX/POSIX certification history is seriously lacking.

    Windows NT was never certified by X/Open. It (or more specifically, its POSIX subsystem) was certified by NIST as conforming to FIPS 151-2, which was basically POSIX.1-1990 with a few optional things mandated, i.e. way less functionality than what X/Open certification would require.

    Also, X/Open did not "collapse" - it merged with OSF to form The Open Group, which owns the UNIX® trademark and still certifies UNIX systems. The most recent UNIX certification was OS X Yosemite. See http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3607.htm

  4. Zed Zee

    NASA is right.

    NASA hit the nail on the head.

    Private Cloud is dead, long live Public Cloud!

    What's the point of me hosting 'on-prem' in my own dc, when I can throw it all into the lap of an MSP to do it for me?

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Re: NASA is right.

      Clearly you're an American.

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