VMware Releases Cloud Foundry To Set The PaaS Cloud Free
Open source cloud development kit seeks to end Google/Microsoft Paas Hegemony
By Alan Shimel on Tue, 04/12/11 - 3:55pm.VMware shook the cloud world today with an announcement that it was releasing an open source PaaS platform called Cloud Foundry. The new platform takes direct aim at the current thought, if not market leaders of the PaaS world Microsoft's Azure and Google's Google Apps platforms. VMware foresees Cloud Foundry ushering in a new era of "platform clouds" that will take the thunder out of Google and Microsoft being the sole hosts of PaaS on a grand scale.
Of course VMware is a company with the scale and chops to spoil this party for Microsoft and Google as well. It could be run in private clouds or on public cloud IaaS environments. It will support a wide range of languages as the diagram below explains, but best of all it will be open source!
Initially Cloud Foundry will be available 3 ways:
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CloudFoundry.com — a complete hosted PaaS environment
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CloudFoundry.org — an open source project where developers and community members can collaborate and contribute to the project.
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Cloud Foundry Micro Cloud — a complete instance of the Cloud Foundry project ideally suited for developer’s desktops, will be forthcoming
Cloud Foundry is actually made up of several technologies and products that VMware has acquired over the recent past and is released under an Apache 2 license. This really could be a game changer in the cloud PaaS space. For a long time now cloud pundits have said that PaaS will become the dominant form of cloud versus IaaS. The fact that VMware released this as open source is I think a brilliant move to combat the reach and girth of its two biggest competitors, Google and Microsoft.
This move could force both Google's and Microsoft's hand into releasing versions of their PaaS products that can be hosted outside of their own data centers. That would be a big change from the current models.
Very exciting times indeed for both the cloud and open source!
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As co-founder and Managing Partner at The CISO Group, Alan Shimel is responsible for driving the vision and mission of the company. The CISO Group offers security consulting and PCI compliance management for the payment card industry. Prior to The CISO Group, Alan was the Chief Strategy Officer at StillSecure. Shimel was the public persona of StillSecure as it grew from start up to helping defend some of the largest and most sensitive networks in the world.
Shimel is an often-cited personality in the technology community and is a sought-after speaker at industry and government conferences and events. His commentary about the state of security, open source and life is followed closely by many industry insiders via his blog and podcast, "Ashimmy, After All These Years" (www.ashimmy.com). Alan is now also a regular contributor to The CISO Group’s security.exe blog and podcast.
Alan has helped build several successful technology companies by combining a strong business background with a deep knowledge of technology. His legal background, long experience in the field, and New York street smarts combine to form a unique personality.
Disclosure: The CISO Group sells a software-as-a-service PCI compliance application called SAQPro. The company is independent and does not represent any other vendor's products as a reseller.
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