Cloud.com software stack goes open source

Cloud.com--which until now was known as VMops--is launching on Tuesday the latest salvo in the battle for cloud computing adoption and mindshare as it releases a new product and changes its name.

In addition to rebranding the company as Cloud.com, the company is releasing the latest version of its CloudStack software under both open-source and commercial licenses. (Note: I struggled with both the .com in the name and hitching entirely to "cloud" until they explained that it's great for market and search results.)

Cloud.com describes CloudStack as "an integrated software solution that enables enterprises and service providers to quickly and easily build Infrastructure as a Service (IAAS) clouds."

Basically, this means that data center service providers and enterprises alike can now deploy new types of services based on cloud principles and offer them to their customers and end users.

Cloud.com Chief Marketing Officer Peder Ulander described CloudStack as an orchestration layer that extends virtualized environments, networks, and storage. It takes all of these elements and allows rules and policies to be set for them. It effectively encapsulates the infrastructure and makes it look like a complete data center.

The CloudStack code will be released under the GPLv3 and according to Ulander, roughly 98 percent of the code will be completely available open source, with the remaining code exclusive to paying customers as part of a certified version of the software.

While there will undoubtedly be complaints about keeping any of the code out of the open-source distribution, any business based on an open-source offering has to create some kind of value above and beyond the freely available code in order to encourage people to pay.

And I continue to believe that open source is the right way to go in order to get adoption in any kind of enterprise-oriented application, especially one in an unproven area such as cloud-like infrastructure.

One interesting note from my discussion with Ulander is the ecosystem taxonomy that Cloud.com uses to explain the marketplace. (Note: The listed companies are just examples, not complete lists.)

• Cloud applications--Oracle, SAP, Microsoft
• Cloud application management--CA, Opsware, Rightscale
• Platform clouds--Google App Engine, Azure
• Infrastructure clouds--Amazon Web Services, Opsource, Cloud.com
• Application clouds--Salesforce.com, WebEx
• Infrastructure--Cisco Systems, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM

What's important to note is how the breadth of categories is expanding and creating new market opportunities. Whether you believe the cloud hype, it's clear that they methods and designs that support cloud principles are only gaining more traction.