About the Openness of Eucalyptus, CloudStack, OpenStack and OpenNebula

We have just published a post at the OpenNebula blog with our view about the different measures that should be considered to evaluate the openness of the main open-source Cloud Management Platforms (CMPs). Which is the most important measure of openness in cloud computing? Do the cloud users really care about this? Users mainly want a solution that meets their functional needs, and are interested in open-source as a way to enhance flexibility, lower costs and avoid lock-in. However, as discussed in the post, most of these benefits are only available when an open-source software can be used in production environments without the addition of proprietary components. 

 It is worth reading!.

 

A Roadmap for Advanced Cloud Technologies under H2020

This is the title of the last report prepared by the EC Cloud Expert Group that proposes a concrete roadmap to help Europe overcome existing technological challenges and reach a key position in the global Cloud market. The previous reports on Advances in Clouds - Research in Future Cloud Computing evaluated the state-of-the-art and developed future research directions in cloud computing. This report is the main result of our last meeting in October 2012 to analyze the expected market development in which Europe can participate and which technological challenges will have to be faced in order to reach these scenarios.

So, enjoy the report. I think it is a must-read for people defining Cloud Computing strategies, developing innovative research lines, or exploring emerging market opportunities beyond today’s Clouds.

About the Complementarity of Eucalyptus, CloudStack, OpenStack and OpenNebula

We have just published at the OpenNebula blog our experience about the different types of cloud models, from datacenter virtualization to infrastructure provision, and about how the main open-source Cloud Management Platforms (CMPs) are targeting their needs. The post introduces the CMP Quadrant, a tool aimed at aiding corporations to better understand the present and future landscape of the cloud market. 

I think it would be best for everyone from these open source projects to figure out how we can work together to better serve our users.

It is worth reading!.

IaaS Cloud Architecture: From Virtualized Datacenters to Federated Cloud Infrastructures

"IaaS Cloud Architecture: From Virtualized Datacenters to Federated Cloud Infrastructures"  is the title of our last article published in the December 2012 issue of the IEEE Computer Magazine that presents an architecture reference model for IaaS clouds. The article introduces the cloud OS (Operating System) platform as the core component of this architecture that is responsible for managing the physical and virtual infrastructure, orchestrating and commanding service provisioning and deployment, and providing federation capabilities for accessing and deploying virtual resources in remote cloud infrastructures. The article ends with a description of different architectures for cloud federation. OpenNebula is also mentioned as an open-source reference implementation of the cloud OS platform.

Enjoy the article!

3 Ways the EU Is Supporting Open Source

Neelie Kroes, European Commissioner for Digital Agenda, presented on Friday at the Open Source Conference 2012 the three ways the European Union (EU) is supporting Open ICT systems, namely open-source, open-procurement, and open-data. Mrs. Kroes outlined the huge benefits of open-source and open-standards, the several hundred-million-euro benefits per year of Open ICT systems for the public sector alone, and how the EU is using open source solutions itself.

 

Mrs. Kroes made reference to OpenNebula as flagship of European open-source cloud innovation supported by EU investments that is laying the basis for interoperable data centers.

Since 2005, OpenNebula has helped many organizations develop value by building innovative cloud services and solutions to meet their user and customer needs in new ways or to meet new market needs. OpenNebula is playing an important role in driving and supporting the transition to cloud computing, and in accelerating the pace of innovation on the datacenter side.

We are really proud of this!

OpenNebula: An Open-source Cloud Management Platform Focused on User Needs

Here is the recording of the OpenNebula session at GigaOM Structure Europe. The interview covers the OpenNebula's focus on user needs and its recipe for success described in the post David Versus Goliath in Open-source Cloud Computing: The OpenNebula Recipe for Success.

David Versus Goliath in Open-source Cloud Computing: The OpenNebula Recipe for Success

Now that OpenNebula has been listed by GigaOM on the list of main reasons why Europe really matters to cloud computing, I am receiving several emails asking about how OpenNebula is able, what’s its "secret recipe", to compete with other open-source projects, like OpenStack, CloudStack or Eucalyptus, backed by strong IT vendors and with wide media presence. Here are some of its ingredients, mix them into a single product:

• A vibrant and engaged community. Many people and organizations contribute in different ways to the project, from the expertise and dedication of our core committers and hundreds of contributors to the valuable feedback of our thousands of users. 
• The power of user-driven development. OpenNebula's roadmap is completely driven by users needs with features that meet real demands, and not features that result from an agreement between IT vendors planning to create their own proprietary cloud solution. 
• Volunteer development by the users. Most of contributors are users of the software that are willing to contribute new innovative features from their production environments, they are not developers hired by vendors to contribute to the project. 
• Delivery as a production-proven, packaged product. OpenNebula comprises all key functionalities for cloud computing with a single installing, patching and updating process. Other open-source alternatives require proprietary components to be ready for the enterprise. 
• Cloud-API agnostic. OpenNebula provides cloud consumers with choice of interfaces, from open cloud by main standards bodies to de-facto standards. OpenNebula does not try to reinvent the wheel and create a new cloud API. 
• Richer functionality and wider integration capabilities. OpenNebula does not only bring an open-source implementation of the most common public cloud interfaces, but also the latest innovations in the management of virtualized data centers for the deployment of cutting edge enterprise clouds.  
• Marketing-free technology. OpenNebula mainly invests its resources in developing technology and serving its users, being really vendor agnostic and free of marketing. 

In summary, a vibrant and engaged community, along with our focus on solving real user needs in innovative ways and the involvement of the users in a fully vendor-agnostic project, constitute the OpenNebula’s recipe to compete with the rest of open-source cloud management platforms.

Thanks to all the people and organizations that have contributed to OpenNebula since its foundation in 2005!