Red Hat moved its Deltacloud open source project into the Apache
Software Foundation's incubator in June. In July, Rackspace made
its Cloud Files code open source and will collaborate with
partners, including NASA, in a project called OpenStack. A
standards body, DMTF, is producing another set of APIs (see below).
Is that more than the emerging cloud market can absorb?
No, and in fact we need all these efforts.
OpenStack and Apache Deltacloud do have similar goals. They're both
building out lightweight REST APIs so companies can tap into the
services of a cloud provider over an HTTP network. But they're
likely to be used for different purposes.
Rackspace OpenStack backers are looking to provide systems that can
be used by cloud services suppliers, who might manage up to a
million servers. Even though it will be aimed at service providers,
if OpenStack is widely used, customers would be able to deal with
providers the same way.
Red Hat's effort will be more likely be used by enterprise
customers, giving them a software stack based on open source code
with which to build private clouds around Red Hat. It will also
make it easier for cloud service providers to interact with that
private cloud, if they support Red Hat's approach.
RightScale CTO Thorsten von Eicken calls OpenStack a "true open
source project," with vendor participants and a community around
the resulting code. That may sound a bit defensive about the
group's open source cred; after all, it's led by vendors, each with
a commercial interest. The Deltacloud project, now in the Apache
incubator, is a more classic open source project, open to
developers around the world who will dilute the commercial interest
of any one company.
But I don't care about the hair-splitting. We need all three of
these API efforts to evolve the cloud, so it connects to many
different customers and implements varied styles of computing. We
are at least headed that way.