Open Source Software and Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a hot topic right now with more and more services moving into the cloud every day. Open source has already been playing a role in cloud computing, but there is quite a bit of speculation about the role that open source will play in the future as the cloud computing industry matures. The economic conditions are part of the reason for the use of open source in cloud computing, but flexibility, avoiding vendor lock-in, and access to the source code are other reasons for choosing to use open source as part of a cloud solution.

According to IDC (PDF link):

"Linux has emerged as a key component of many of today&aposs available cloud infrastructures, providing both the base technology for cloud providers and an operating environment for customers that wish to access Linux operating system and Linux services that are hosted in a cloud."

"Linux has gained traction among cloud providers due to its low cost and customizability. Cloud providers are building cutting-edge, highly complex services and often require source code access and the ability to modify the base code to their highly specific needs."

On the one hand, open source technologies are being used extensively as part of the infrastructure behind many of the cloud solutions being offered by companies like Amazon and Google. However, the cloud platforms being developing by the big providers include a stack of proprietary code on top of the open source infrastructure. Some people express concern that the cloud will make open source software less relevant as these companies develop proprietary solutions for the cloud that run on top of this open source infrastructure. Tim O&aposReilly talked about this idea a year ago, and he framed the discussion with a couple of questions:

"What good are free and open source licenses, all based on the act of software distribution, when software is no longer distributed but merely performed on the global network stage? How can we preserve freedom to innovate when the competitive advantage of online players comes from massive databases created via user contribution, which literally get better the more people use them, raising seemingly insuperable barriers to new competition?"

While open source in the cloud has some challenges, O&aposReilly was fairly optimistic about the possibilities for the future of open source and cloud computing. He provided plenty of advice sprinkled throughout the article about using federated services rather than centralized ones, sticking to open standards and protocols, focusing on reusable components, and more.

Other recent articles aren&apost quite as optimistic. Stephen O&aposGrady from Red Monk talks about whether or not open source software can provide a viable complete alternative to cloud offerings from companies like Amazon. The idea is to take open source past the infrastructure layer and use open source to provide the entire cloud platform, which O&aposGrady says would be particularly useful for companies wanting to avoid lock-in or create private clouds that run within an organization&aposs infrastructure. With the popularity of the proprietary cloud platforms, developing a complete open source alternative could be nearly impossible for a single company, so O&aposGrady sees partnerships as a difficult, but possible alternative solution. Matt Asay comments on O&aposGrady&aposs points by saying, "don&apost expect open source to &aposwin&apos in the cloud. … Rather, look to open source to influence, to shape the cloud."

There are already a number of open source cloud resources in various states of completeness, including Eucalyptus, Nimbus and more. People have been talking about open source software at recent cloud conferences, like Structure 09, as a way to help address some of the issues associated with cloud computing. While I don&apost necessarily see open source as becoming the solution for cloud computing, I do see it playing a role as one of the many possible cloud solutions providing end users with an alternative that they can choose.

What do you see as the future of open source in cloud computing?

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You show me mine, I’ll expo you yours, OSCON

Why do I love the show floor at conferences? It&aposs almost impossible to have a reasonable conversation with the poor folks doing booth duty. Often this is because they might not be working in the area that you are interested in, or the noise level is just too high to have a good talk.

Sadly, I am addicted to technology, and the show floor is a great place for a quick fix.

OSCON is the Open Source Convention put on by O&aposReilly Media and is being held in the San Jose Convention Center. As with any good-sized convention, the big hitters in the technology business are present…

• Microsoft – OK, these guys seem unusual to be present in an open source setting, but they want to highlight the tools they have created for hosting open source projects. Their booth seems mostly an excuse for people to play Guitar Hero.
• Sun – as the company which has contributed the most lines of open source code, it&aposs not surprising to see them with a strong presence.

  Again, their booth was more a lounge rather than a place to have technology demos and talks. They did have a great supply of giveaways./li>

• Amazon – had a smaller booth, and the focus seems mostly on code. They posted a code snippet and a contest for solving a problem with it.
• Google – Also a very code focused booth. They were talking a lot about code.google.com, their Soureforge competitor.
• Facebook – Although I&aposm sure that any of the companies at OSCOn would love to hire really killer technical talent. And certainly there is good talent there. But the Facebook booth seemed to be totally focused on recruiting people. A little obvious, I guess.
• Intel – as is usually the case, Intel&aposs booth was crammed with technology demos, booth talks and an amazing give-away. I&aposm not sure which of these created the long lines in the booth, but it was pretty full whenever I came by.

The demos showed a good split between hardware geek stuff and software partners.

• OpenSolaris on Xeon, particularly showing great tools like PowerTop, which now has a pretty gtk interface.
• SuSE running on a Xeon 5500 (formerly Nehalem) server. They were showing an Oracle database, and the tools available for the administrator here.
• Moblin, running on Netbooks, Moble Internet Devices and automobiles. This last was really cool – there was a functional open source dialer which successfully called my cell phone!

Because O&aposReilly is a media company, there are some booths which don&apost usually fit in the usual technology conference – publishing companies:

• No Starch Press- I love the useful technology titles these guys have, and I really love the art work these guys have on their book covers, in particular a robot pouring coffee into the open door in its head.
• Manning – don&apost know as much about these guys, they seem to have good titles.
• Linux Pro Magazine
• O&aposReilly – hosted a lounge and a very nice book store.

And being an open source conference, there is a selection of what I would call "advocacy" booths: Electronic Fronteir Foundation, Free Software Foundation, the ACLU and FOSSFA which is the Free and Open Source Software for Africa group.

I also usually see one or two things that I learn about. One of these was Schooner. These guys are providing engines with Intel Xeon 5500 series processors (formerly Nehalem) and Intel Solid State Disks or SSDs and their optimized version of Linux, memcached and MySQL. What is really cool about this is that they didn&apost just put together some great Intel hardware and push the box out. They have added a bunch of value by optimizing the open source software. As a result, they get fantastic performance improvements.

What was also very cool was to see that Schooner&aposs VP of Engineering is Dave Rodgers, who was the VP of engineering at Sequent Computer Systems when I joined them in the 80s. So it was really cool to see Dave and catch up with him.

It&aposs a cool thing to see the various corporate tribes with their logo-ed T-Shirts herding together and mingling in the various lounges.

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SharePoint in the Cloud

	SharePoint in the Cloud StoragePoint’s Cloud Adapters allow you to store your SharePoint blobs outside of SQL Server in the Cloud. Microsoft Azure, EMC Atmos onLine and Amazon S3 all shown in the video below. Looks good, and with all the content people are…
StoragePoint’s Cloud Adapters allow you to store your SharePoint blobs outside of SQL Server in the Cloud. Microsoft Azure, EMC Atmos onLine and Amazon S3 all shown in the video below. Looks good, and with all the content people are putting into SharePoint it could be timely.   “;” alt=”">
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