Posts tagged open source project
Former MySQL CEO talks Eucalyptus and cloud computing
Mar 29th
Marten Mickos presided over the growth of MySQL from an open source project to a $1 billion business that was fundamental to growth of the commercial Web, and he’s now taken the reins at another open source project turned for-profit venture, Eucalyptus Systems. The startup develops software that turns commodity servers into cloud computing environments that act like Amazon Web Services. Eucalyptus powers the NASA Nebula project, one of the largest cloud environments in the federal government today, and some research and data crunching projects at pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, among others. Mickos explains his return to business and why he chose cloud computing.
What prompted the move to Eucalyptus and what are the immediate plans for the business?
Marten Mickos: It’s a massive opportunity and a great team; I couldn’t resist it. In 2010, we are not changing any plans. We are ramping up the growth rate and investment, but it’s essentially the plan that the management detailed last year. Two key things this year are to get more releases out, to be very diligent with producing more code and release it with high quality, and the other thing is securing some key partnerships and customer relationships.
We already work closely with Canonical on the Ubuntu cloud edition, that’s one obvious thing; we’ll be working with other large manufacturers of hardware and software and even system integrators who are the one’s actually building the private clouds for large enterprises.
Does Eucalyptus have the same potential as MySQL?
MM: This might be an even bigger opportunity, business-wise. It’s so early in cloud computing to estimate how big it will be. It’s something that is needed all over the planet in most data centers, public or private, so I think it will be a massive opportunity. Of course, we don’t know whether we will win. We think we have a great start, we know how to go about it, but of course there are many question marks here. That’s the thrill of it.
This looks like a green field market? A new space for growth based on cloud?
MM: Well, if you listen to Goldman Sachs or Piper Jaffray or those guys, they say that this is the biggest thing in the coming ten years, and the biggest thing really means something massive. To be the biggest thing, it has to be a question of tens of billions of dollars in total. I’m not saying we can capture all of it, but I think Eucalyptus has a unique opportunity to be a very strategic player in that market. Of course, there are big players, vendors who will be strong players in cloud computing, there will be small and large ones. I know and I can sense it’s a huge opportunity compared to anything out there.
Is now the time that cloud is coming to fruition as a market?
MM: Well, I can’t say I’m super analytical about it. I’ve learnt a lot in the last 12 months, that’s obviously clear. I still think its early days, so if somebody joins cloud computing a year from now, it may not be too late. Even two years from now, there will be plenty of big new opportunities. So I’m joining early, but at the same time, I’m also seeing that there is real revenue to be had, right now.
What is so great about the cloud? We have outsourced and services delivered online already, and some say they’ve being doing it all along.
MM: Our view is that cloud computing is a new challenge and you need new software to solve it. You can’t solve new problems with old software. I think the world has shown that over and over again.
Sure, some vendors will still claim that some old software they have is capable of providing cloud computing services. Let’s be clear, the old guys do have functioning solutions. Oracle and IBM and Microsoft, they have great software stacks that work well and they may produce great computing or they may produce something else, Software as a Service (SaaS), that is getting close to cloud. They do not have Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), where you get complete elasticity with the services, and there are a number of new benefits you get with something like Eucalyptus that you cannot get with the old stuff. The old stuff works, it works very well, so you shouldn’t expect it to completely go away, but it doesn’t provide the same level of benefits.
Technological advances do provide new opportunities, and maybe they are not new under the sun, but they bring some distinctive benefit that wasn’t there before.
Where are the challenges for cloud computing?
MM: Well, there will be inertia among customers. Not all customers will be ready to jump on this bandwagon right away; some will. But I think we talk about the whole notion of elastic clouds and we forget that building elasticity is really, really, really difficult. Getting a cloud that can truly scale up and down seamlessly, that’s hard work. Doing it with low latency is even harder, and then adding on top of that the metering, the awareness of what resources are being used and where the bottlenecks are; in the aggregate, it means it’s a huge technical challenge.
Will cloud computing inevitably turn computing power into a uniform commodity, like corn?
MM: There will definitely be services like that, but we will always continue to have corporations and governments who cannot live in such an environment and need the security and the assurance and the uptime that you can only provide through a dedicated service. That’s what Eucalyptus is targeting, the private cloud where there are heightened requirements on exactly those areas.
But sure, there will probably be computing available from the 7-11 where everybody can buy a little bit of computing where they need it. And Amazon is showing that; it’s amazing what Amazon is doing with their cloud, we must not underestimate their meaning to the market. They’re showing you can run it with low margins, on a massive scale, for consumers and corporations, available for anybody. Cloud computing wouldn’t be in the state it’s in today if Amazon hadn’t shown the way.
And the future looks bright?
MM: I think it’s hard! It’s difficult. This is a difficult area, it’s not for the faint of heart, but there’s just a massive opportunity. The world will need this; there’s just a constant need for cloud computing solutions. It’s not like we’ll suddenly realize it’s just a fad and nobody really needed it. People will need it. The challenge will be in whether we can make it sufficiently efficient and functional and easy to use. Full Source
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Guest Post: Si Chen on Cloud Computing and Open Source
Feb 26th
Introduction
Two years ago, I switched from Mozilla Thunderbird to Gmail. Ever since then, a little voice has bugged me each time I sent an email. You see, I’m an open source software developer, the name of my company is “Open Source Strategies,” and our mission is to promote open source software. So when I give up on one of the most popular and successful open source applications, is it just an isolated expedient, or does it mean something bigger?
After two years, I’ve decided that it does. Cloud computing is a big time game changer, and we open source developers better get prepared.
Cloud applications are everywhere today, offering a hosted alternative to just about every open source project. For example, just from Google consider the following:
- Gmail to replace sendmail/postfix and Thunderbird
- Google Apps to replace Zimbra
- Google Docs to replace OpenOffice
- Google Groups to replace forums
- Google Sites to replace wikis and content management systems.
Then there are smaller cloud-based applications like Disqus and MicroPoll to replace the discussion and poll features which are ubiquitous in ecommerce and content management systems like Joomla!, Drupal, WordPress, and Magento.
And yet, open source developers are amazingly complacent. We’re lulled by the fact that most open source applications are web-enabled. Some of us think the cloud is just another deployment option. Some of us hope that maybe a cloud computing vendor would buy us out. Does none of us ever wonder if “No Software” might just mean “No Open Source Software” as well?
We should take cloud computing more seriously. Cloud computing has created a new value proposition for users. Unless open source developers understand and adapt to it, they will be relegated to the sidelines of the software industry. Let’s first take a look at that value proposition, and then at what it means for open source.
Traditional vs. Open Source vs. Cloud Value Propositions
Traditional commercial software is often expensive. First you have to pay to license the software, then pay for hardware to run it, then pay again for the software to be customized, and finally pay regularly for maintenance and support. Furthermore, because the source code is not available, commercial software could be very difficult to customize to meet the users’ actual needs. This combination of high cost and lack of flexibility is pushing some CIO’s to look for greener pastures.
Open source addresses both of these issues with a once novel but now familiar approach. The software is available free of charge, and the source code is also available so the user could modify it to fit their needs. The user just has to pay for the hardware and any customizations he needs, so the cost to acquire the software is significantly lower. Most importantly, the user has the flexibility to modify and use the software according to his needs.
Cloud-based software takes a different approach. The user pays a recurring fee to use a cloud-based application. In return, the cloud vendor provides both the hardware and software as a package. Cloud-based applications themselves are highly standardized, and you don’t get to see the source code. However, they usually provide APIs for building third-party add-on modules. This way, cloud vendors (try to) provide flexibility via a better technical architecture, rather than by freeing the code.
Clearly, people like this model. Consider two cases in point:
- Salesforce.com has grown to over a million users
- Google Apps has signed up over two million businesses
This begs the question: Why are cloud-based applications so successful? Because they have made it easy. Even though open source software is free, you still have to get the hardware and then set up and possibly customize it. Cloud software vendors have taken care of all that for us, so we just have to show up with our browsers. For most users who don’t have very specialized needs, that convenience is far more important than having the source code.
So What About Open Source?
One viable option for open source software is simply to become the “anti-cloud.” Perhaps somethings aren’t meant to be “in the cloud” after all. For example, Eucalyptus is offering an open source solution to build internal clouds inside the data center. (The US Army’s Deputy CIO is quoted on their home page. Could you imagine why the military might not want everything “in the cloud?”)
Another interesting option is to make open source software the entry point to the cloud. Under this model, the real value of computing moves to the cloud, and open source becomes a way to mobilize developers to create as many entry points to that reservoir of value as possible. For example, Google made its Android platform open source to encourage the development of mobile applications which connect to the web—where Google rules. Skype’s plans to open source its client software seems to fit with this logic as well.
Finally, are there cases where flexibility is so important that standardized applications in the cloud wouldn’t work for a lot of users? We believe that Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is one such case. Because virtually every business has some unique processes, almost all ERP software packages must be customized to meet the needs of the particular organization. In these cases, open source is the right solution, and we’ve seen it in polls like this one from the home page of opentaps Open Source ERP + CRM, which tells us that most users of open source ERP are looking to deploy it internally:
Open Source and the Cloud Together
Ultimately, open source and the cloud are not mutually exclusive; they can work together.
I started my blog at opensourcestrategies.blogspot.com five years ago, but then moved it to WordPress last year. So here’s a case where I’ve moved off the cloud and back to open source. But I also use Google’s Feedburner to syndicate my blog, and I’m thinking about adding Facebook wigdets, MicroPoll, and Disqus as well.
I hope this may serve as an example for the future: a free and flexible open source core application enhanced by cloud add-ons. Open source software gave me more control, specifically over my online identity: I can have my own domain name, look and feel, and my choice of modules and add-ons. The cloud applications gave me easy, inexpensive, and maintenance-free ways to add standard features to this core. Today this is common in the blogging world, but we are re-architecting opentaps to bring that to enterprise software such as ERP and CRM as well: a world of open core architecture and platform-independent add-on modules.
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Oracle shutting off Sun project-hosting site
Feb 4th
In the wake of its merger with Sun Microsystems, Oracle is discontinuing access to Project Kenai, which was developed by Sun as an open source project-hosting site.
Kenai, Oracle said in an updated FAQ statement for developers on Tuesday, will be discontinued for public use. “Oracle will continue to use it internally and look for ways that our customers can take advantage of it,” the Oracle FAQ said.
[ InfoWorld's Paul Krill reported last week that Oracle canceled plans for the Sun Cloud public cloud service announced by Sun last year. ]
The phasing-out is being done to consolidate project-hosting, according to the Project Kenai Team in a Web posting about the future of Kenai. “Minimizing the number of current project-hosting sites is a start in this direction,” the team said.
At the Kenai beta site, users were advised to being migrating repositories and content to other locations.
“The complete shutdown of the site and the removal of the domain will be completed in the next 60 days (April 2nd 2010). This should provide ample time for all projects to be moved to a new home of the project owners choice,” the Kenai team said.
“Any projects that remain after the 60 day limit (April 2nd 2010), will be removed when the site is turned off,” the team said..
“While it has come time to close the domain of Kenai.com, the infrastructure, which is already used under Netbeans.org, will live on to support other domains in the future,” the team said.
Oracle also lauded in the FAQ the combination of the OTN (Oracle Technology Network), the Sun BigAdmin system administration portal, and the Sun Developer Network, which includes the java.sun.com Web site.
This combination will “result in the largest and most diverse community of developers, database administrators, sysadmins, and architects,” Oracle said.
For the near future, Sun Developer Network and BigAdmin will remain in current forms, Oracle said. The company foresees an integration of these sites into a redesigned and re-architected OTN.
Also, Oracle plans to continue to offer certifications for Sun technologies including Java, SPARC, Solaris, and MySQL as part of the Oracle University program.
Oracle one week ago today detailed ambitious plans for its newly acquired Sun technologies.
This story, “Oracle shutting off Sun project-hosting site,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest news in software development at InfoWorld.com.
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