Get Ready for 'Cloud Wars' as VMware Launches Cloud Foundry
VMware's arrival in the cloud has already been dubbed 'Cloud Wars', as the proprietary virtualization software company goes open source
Posted by Killian McAleese, 18th April 2011
Last week VMware announced the launch of Cloud Foundry. Billed as the world's first open source platform as a service (PaaS), Cloud Foundry may well see VMware go head-to-head with Red Hat, Microsoft and Google.
VMware is not a new name by any means, and the company's virtualization platform products have been around since 1998.
But the move towards open source demonstrates a willingness to change game in order to compete in this growing market.
And competition may be fierce indeed. Microsoft already runs Windows Azure Platform, which allows developers to build, host and scale applications in a cloud environment.
Open Stack
There are also open-source rivals to contend with, notably NASA and Rackspace Hosting's Open Stack and Red Hat's Cloud Foundations.
Open Stack Cloud Software was launched in July 2010 and is released under the terms of the Apache 2.0 licence. Currently there are 63 participating companies participating in the project, including Dell, Intel and Cisco.
Open Stack describe their products as “a collection of open source technologies delivering a massively scalable cloud operating system.”
'Dramatically Simplified Approach'
With the launch of Cloud Foundry, also under the Apache 2.0 licence, VMware will likely be looking to corner some of that market by providing hosted cloud platforms at cloudfoundry.com and providing related software at cloudfoundry.org.
Commenting on what VMware see as one of the key advantages of Cloud Foundry, Co-President, Application Platform Tod Nielsen claims that it “delivers a dramatically simplified approach that embraces the diversity and speed of modern development that is at the heart of today’s most successful applications while exploiting key trends in mobile, social and cloud computing.”
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