Citrix’s Confusing Open Cloud Strategy

According to Citrix website,

Citrix OpenCloud Framework lets enterprises and cloud service providers build and operate private and public clouds by providing the core logic to rapidly provision, manage, and control applications deployed as cloud-based services. Additionally, it supports interoperability with popular cloud interfaces to let customers leverage their existing investments for migration to the cloud.

My understanding of this framework is that Citrix offers the core components for making a cloud including the hypervisor, some network components and cloud management software. They expect a community to form around this framework and build the other components. Hey Citrix folks, correct me if I am wrong.

There are many reasons to be confused. First and foremost, the CTO of Citrix, Simon Crosby, tweeted that the entire framework is 100% Open Source Software.

@sramji @samj opencloud is 100% OSS , with opportunities for vendors to add differentiated features for hypervisor, vswitch, storage, orch

This immediately brings into focus “what are the OSS components inside the framework?”. As far as I know the only OSS components I see are Xen Hypervisor and Openvswitch (but, again, keep in mind that I am basing this post only on their vaguely written website). If it is 100% OSS as Mr. Crosby claims, I would expect Citrix to make VMLogix open source too. Neither their website nor the press release is clear about it. The last time I spoke to VMLogix, they were not open source. If VMLogix, which I guess is going to be the cloud management component of Citrix Open Cloud Framework, is not released under Open Source license, I cannot accept Citrix Open Cloud as 100% OSS. Period.

Mr. Crosby said on Twitter that an open source product need not have all the components as open source. Yes, open core products do have proprietary components in it and I have no problems with that. But if something is called 100% open source by the company that releases the software, it should have all the components released under one of the OSI approved licenses. If not, call the product open core and slap some proprietary components to it. But it is not 100% OSS. Unfortunately, Citirx website doesn’t clarify on the licenses and it is important that they clarify this to clear the confusion.

The second confusion is with regards to Openstack.org. Citrix has been rooting for Openstack and they said that they are working closely with Openstack community and contributing code. To me, Citrix Open Cloud framework appears to be a duplicate of Openstack.org efforts. Well, there are some differences but the motivation is the same. Are they going to compete with Openstack? If yes, how sincere are they in their cooperation with this open source project. If no, then the whole thing sounds crazy as far as I am concerned. Once again, I expect Citrix to come out and discuss their relationship with Openstack frankly.

Citrix’s open cloud announcement is confusing at best. I had these thoughts on the very day they announced it but I held on to it because I wanted to make sure that I am not missing anything. My tight schedule in the past few days didn’t allow me to reach out to Clouderati on this topic. Today, Sam Johnston made a blog post talking about the same issues and it completely resonated with me. I, then, decided to write about it with the hope that Citrix will come out and clear out the doubts in the minds of many clouderati. As long as Citrix wants to open source their framework, I will gladly root for them as I have done with other open source projects. But if this is one of those marketing attempts to push the product to gain traction in the market, I will definitely be critical of their approach. I would any day trust a company who is unabashed about their proprietary nature over someone who is trying to misuse open source label. Citirx, it is time for you to clear the air on this topic.