Yahoo To Offer Open Source Cloud "Container"
Yahoo is making the technology it uses itself open source. Yahoo Cloud is somewhere between Iaas and Paas. Will it find a base is the question
By Alan Shimel on Tue, 05/11/10 - 11:22pm.Yahoo is planning to release as open source, the cloud based platform it uses for its own internal applications early next year according to this report in The Register. Know in internally at Yahoo as "the Cloud", it is described in the article as somewhere between Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud and Google App Engine.
Yahoo evidently describes its cloud as "containers" that are pre-configured with certain functions and applications like load balancing and security already configured. But it would still allow developers to work with many of the LAMP stack tools they know and love.
To me this sounds like Yahoo is going to offer a bit of a hybrid between IaaS and PaaS. This would potentially give it a niche between Google's and Microsoft's PaaS cloud offering and Amazon's IaaS cloud offering. However, besides releasing the software as open source, there is no mention of Yahoo offering a service built around this software. It would seem like a natural next step though. I would be very surprised if Yahoo was not a cloud provider by this time next year.
It would set up a familiar market dynamic. Yahoo, Google and Yahoo vying for cloud domination with Amazon set to take them on. An interesting dynamic though is that Yahoo would actually be the "true open source" alternative. While Google has described much of the designs of what it uses available, it is not actually open source. Microsoft's Azure is not open and Amazon is not either.
According to the Register article, Yahoo intends to open source almost its entire back end platform. Building a business around that will be the challenge for Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and the rest of the Yahoo team. A win in the cloud could be just what Yahoo needs to get back in the game.
- About Open Source Fact and Fiction
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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