Amazon Web Services is almost synonymous with the term “public cloud,” but that association could change in 2014 as OpenStack vendors consolidate and tailor their offerings to organizations needing multi-cloud environments. At the same time, private clouds that run OpenStack could mature this year and turn into long-term, vendor-agnostic solutions for enterprises.
Speaking to SiliconANGLE, eNovance vice president of products Nick Barcet was optimistic that 2014 would be a pivotal year for OpenStack uptake as part of a multi-cloud deployment. In particular, OpenStack clouds could make up some ground on AWS with companies that require a mixture of on-premises and public resources. The impetus for choosing OpenStack may be the realization that having greater freedom in application deployment is more important than possessing an integrated solution from a single vendor.
“Right now, a cloud is a technology which allows a customer to launch ecosystems at will. They don’t care whether this is done using standards or proprietary technology,” Barcet told SiliconANGLE. “This is going to change in 2014 because people will start to realize the cloud is a way to have the capacity to switch providers quickly. To do that they need to rely on something that isn’t vendor-dependent.”
Barcet clarified, arguing that AWS and Microsoft Windows Azure were good services but not long-term solutions for the enterprise cloud. Independence and flexibility could make OpenStack deployments a better answer.
Certainly, the open source community has enjoyed increased momentum recently, as the list of OpenStack contributors continues to grow and major players such as HP get on board. Rather than ignore the trend toward open software and hardware, these prominent vendors are trying to get in on the market and provide enterprises with solutions that promote agility and operational efficiency.
