VMware, Piston Cloud pledge to develop open source PaaS offering

It's only natural, Subramanian says, for OpenStack to begin to integrate with a PaaS offering. As the IaaS market becomes commoditized, the real value for providers is in PaaS offerings, he says. OpenStack end users, such as cloud service providers and large enterprises, will increasingly demand having PaaS integration, Subramanian predicts. While there has been some discussion about OpenStack developing an in-house PaaS tool, Subramanian says that would have been a waste of resources if there are open-source PaaS project that OpenStack can integrate with, such as Cloud Foundry.

PAAS BACKGROUND: A world of PaaS-ibilities

Meanwhile, VMware is looking to enhance its open source credentials, Subramanian says. In the IaaS market, VMware is seen as a proprietary competing offering to OpenStack, but in PaaS it is looking to establish itself as an open source player. "Even though [VMware] released Cloud Foundry under open source license, there are still suspicions about VMware's hidden agenda among open source practitioners and pundits," Subramanian says. "By supporting this project, VMware wants to clear up any apprehensions that they will derail the CloudFoundry project in the future to suit their business agenda. In my opinion, I don't see VMware having any such agenda but even if they have, there will be forks and there are credible companies ready to lead the fork."

Network World staff writer Brandon Butler covers cloud computing and social media. He can be reached at BButler@nww.com and found on TwitterTwitter at @BButlerNWW. Alles zu Twitter auf CIO.de