Open Source And Cloud Computing: Eucalyptus Joins Hand With RedHat Targeting Private Cloud Market

Eucalyptus Systems (see previous CloudAve coverage), the academic project turned commercial venture offering private cloud solutions for enterprises, today announced a partnership with RedHat (see previous CloudAve coverage), leading enterprise Linux vendor who is shifting their focus to cloud computing recently. This partnership suits both the companies and it can go a long way towards tightening their market position in the enterprise cloud segment. Well, if I have to give unsolicited advice to RedHat, I would say that RedHat should buy Eucalyptus Systems to get a stronger footing on the enterprise cloud market.

What is the partnership about?

With this partnership, Eucalyptus will support RedHat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV). They are also announcing support for Apache Deltacloud API, a single REST API for many different clouds which was originally released by RedHat in 2009 and eventually moved to Apache Incubator in 2010. Even though Eucalyptus has been supporting KVM for a long time, the support for RHEV is important because it is a crucial part of RedHat’s cloud strategy. By integrating Eucalyptus with RHEV-M, the management module, customers can seamlessly manage the infrastructure between the virtualization and cloud environments. Clearly, Eucalyptus is interested in piggybacking on RedHat’s enterprise strategy as they focus to move deeper into the enterprise market. However, they also help fill a gap in the RedHat cloud arsenal. This is a mutually beneficial partnership for both companies as they enter 2011, which is expected to be a year of enterprise hybrid clouds.

The other part of the announcement is their support for Apache Deltacloud API. This is bit of a surprise for me because even though Deltacloud API is pretty robust and language agnostic, its support for cloud providers is pretty limited compared to, say, jClouds. Already, Eucalyptus is supporting Amazon EC2 API and vCloud API and this partnership only brings Rackspace Cloud into the table. When I pressed Marten Mickos, CEO of Eucalyptus Systems, on this, he frankly told me that the decision is based more on business considerations than technological considerations. Having said that, there is no denying that Deltacloud API will add support for more cloud providers in the coming years.

Then, there is the question of “Why RedHat when there is already a deeper collaboration with Ubuntu?” and I asked Marten about it. He categorically told me that both RedHat and Canonical are their partners but he differentiated the market segments where Eucalyptus consider them as the right partners. He told me that they see RedHat as a stronger player in the enterprise space and Ubuntu as a stronger player in the mobile and web space. He said Eucalyptus is partnering with both the Linux vendors to target these different segments. However, my personal view is that Canonical is clearly making a push in the enterprise market with Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud and till sometime back, they were leading RedHat in the buzzdom because of lack of cloud computing efforts from the RedHat side. With the reports of Canonical embracing OpenStack, it is time for Eucalyptus to reach out to other Linux vendors with a clear cloud strategy. Eucalyptus is doing just that and with RedHat being a clear leader in the enterprise space, it greatly helps Eucalyptus’ strategy as they try to penetrate deeper into the enterprise market in the coming year. In short, it is an interesting move by Eucalyptus and I am expecting them to compete hard with OpenStack in creating buzz in the tech media in 2011.