Cloud.com Brokers OpenStack-Microsoft Marriage

Cloud.com (see previous CloudAve coverage), the company that helped Korean Telecom and few other Asian telecom providers establish public clouds, today announced that they have brokered a partnership between Microsoft and OpenStack. Open source purists may not like this idea of Microsoft coming into the OpenStack picture but I think this is a shot in the arm for OpenStack project because this interoperability, orchestrated by Cloud.com, will help them in the enterprise cloud space. In this post, I will do a quick analysis and come back for a detailed analysis sometime in the future when we start to see some impact of the move.

What is the announcement?

Cloud.com will not help integrate Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V with OpenStack thereby allowing enterprises and service providers to run a mix of Windows and Non-Microsoft operating systems. As part of the collaboration, Microsoft will provide architectural and technical guidance to Cloud.com. Cloud.com in turn will develop the code to support OpenStack on Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V. Once complete, the project code will be checked into the public code repository at http://openstack.org.

What is the significance?

The most significant aspect of this move is the push OpenStack and Cloud.com get in the enterprise market. OpenStack is just starting up and the integration with Windows Server technology will help them gain traction on the enterprise side. Even though I have seen large scale adoption of Cloud.com technology in the service provider market, the adoption rate is a bit slow on the enterprise side. This partnership with Microsoft will also help them get a stronger foothold on the enterprise side.

I see Eucalyptus Systems as the main competitor to OpenStack and, as far as I know, Eucalyptus Systems doesn’t support Hyper-V even though it has support for Windows Guest OS. This partnership will give OpenStack an advantage over Eucalyptus Systems.

Ever since Microsoft lost out the opportunity to be the leader in the Cloud Computing space, they are touting openness as a differentiating factor in the Cloud (which I don’t agree at all). This will give them another opportunity to tout their openness and interoperability mantra.

Conclusion

The biggest reason for my excitement over this announcement is the fact that this adds enterprise level legitimacy to OpenStack and adds to the momentum it already has in the recent months. If VMware shows the same willingness as Microsoft and Citrix in cooperating with OpenStack, it will be a big win for OpenStack. We will have to wait and see what happens there. When OpenStack project was formed, Cloud.com was one of the initial backers. Their position in the OpenStack ecosystem was at the orchestration layer. By bringing in the collaboration between Microsoft and OpenStack, they have solidified their position in that space and this will help them a as and when OpenStack gains legitimacy inside the enterprise.