openAdmin
01-24-2010, 03:35 PM
As a rapidly increasing number of developers are tapping into the cloud and moving away from traditional enterprise offerings, VMware (http://www.opensourcegroups.com/www.vmware.com) is also taking appropriate steps on the home front with respect to its vCloud platform (http://www.vmware.com/solutions/cloud-services/). Its cloud initiative has become more developer friendly with this week’s release of software development kits (SDKs) for Java and Python intended to promote apps for its cloud interface. The company also announced that open-source client libraries and tools were available for vCloud, including the libcloud (http://incubator.apache.org/libcloud/)Python library and jclouds, (http://www.opensourcegroups.com/www.jclouds.org) a framework supporting Java development across clouds from multiple providers. Other opensource integration tools such as Ant, a Java build tool, and Apache Maven, a software project management tool, have been adapted for use with the vCloud API via the jclouds plugin. These libraries along with the vCloud API are meant to facilitate better interoperability with VM’s newly introduced public cloud service and VMware’s hosting partners.
VMware is buying Yahoo’sopen source e-mail technology unit Zimbra (http://www.opensourcegroups.com/www.zimbra.com) to boost its cloud applications offerings. Moreover VMware’s support for Open Virtualization Format (http://www.vmware.com/appliances/getting-started/learn/ovf.html) which is an open standard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard) for distributing virtualization software means that any cloud provider can adopt vCloud without feeling compelled to buy VMware’s virtualization stack. Another major open source move for VMware was the 2009 acquisition of Enterprise Java tools provider SpringSource (http://www.opensourcegroups.com/www.springsource.com). With all these maneuvers it’s clear the Palo Alto based vendor wants to not only speed up virtualization of cloud offerings for enterprise clients but also more importantly move beyond the realms of virtualization for which it is best known and expand into web based on demand enterprise and web apps market à la Google Apps. It recently introduced a cheaper version of vCloud, called vCloud Express (http://www.vmware.com/go/vcloudexpress) which provides pay-as-you-go public computing resources that competes with Amazon EC2 and Rackspace. VMware partners Cloudera (http://www.opensourcegroups.com/www.cloudera.com) and WebAppVM (http://www.opensourcegroups.com/www.webappvm.com) have announced new solutions for the Express platform developed with the vCloud API and the SDKs further strengthening the vCloud ecosystem.
Opensource has become an integral part of VMware’s cloud strategy and these latest moves would certainly work in the company’s favor as it waits for the Distributed Management Task Force (http://www.dmtf.org/home) to certify it’s cloud API as an open standard.
VMware is buying Yahoo’sopen source e-mail technology unit Zimbra (http://www.opensourcegroups.com/www.zimbra.com) to boost its cloud applications offerings. Moreover VMware’s support for Open Virtualization Format (http://www.vmware.com/appliances/getting-started/learn/ovf.html) which is an open standard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard) for distributing virtualization software means that any cloud provider can adopt vCloud without feeling compelled to buy VMware’s virtualization stack. Another major open source move for VMware was the 2009 acquisition of Enterprise Java tools provider SpringSource (http://www.opensourcegroups.com/www.springsource.com). With all these maneuvers it’s clear the Palo Alto based vendor wants to not only speed up virtualization of cloud offerings for enterprise clients but also more importantly move beyond the realms of virtualization for which it is best known and expand into web based on demand enterprise and web apps market à la Google Apps. It recently introduced a cheaper version of vCloud, called vCloud Express (http://www.vmware.com/go/vcloudexpress) which provides pay-as-you-go public computing resources that competes with Amazon EC2 and Rackspace. VMware partners Cloudera (http://www.opensourcegroups.com/www.cloudera.com) and WebAppVM (http://www.opensourcegroups.com/www.webappvm.com) have announced new solutions for the Express platform developed with the vCloud API and the SDKs further strengthening the vCloud ecosystem.
Opensource has become an integral part of VMware’s cloud strategy and these latest moves would certainly work in the company’s favor as it waits for the Distributed Management Task Force (http://www.dmtf.org/home) to certify it’s cloud API as an open standard.