* Qlusters exits the open source software game
Qlusters, maker of the open source systems management software OpenQRM, last week announced on SourceForge.net that the most recent release of its OpenQRM systems management software would be the last from Qlusters.
According to an item posted last week by Amit Ashman, vice president of products at Qlusters, on SourceForge.net: “Following Release 3.5 – the last release from Qlusters – we hope the community will continue to evolve and develop OpenQRM together with Matt Rechenburg – OpenQRM’s active project manager, who has been doing a wonderful job not just in driving the community but also in evangelizing and promoting OpenQRM throughout the industry. Qlusters would like to wish the OpenQRM project community, and Matt Rechenburg, a future of prosperity and continued success.”
Qlusters, founded in 2001 by former CEO Ofer Shoshan and Moshe Bar who have also been linked with XenSource, recently experienced some changes in its management team that could have led to this shift in product direction, speculates analyst Matthew Aslett who covers enterprise software for The 451 Group. Yet he says in a recent blog post that the company’s decision to set OpenQRM free to the open source community offers little insight into Qlusters overall direction.
“No word yet from Qlusters on its future direction. However, it is not surprising to see changes at the company. It has been particularly quiet since former CTO William Hurley left to become chief open source strategy architect at BMC,” Aslett writes. ” In fact, I was more surprised to see an announcement regarding Qlusters than I was the fact that it is getting out of OpenQRM development.
The vendor is considered one of the little four open source management players alongside GroundWork Open Source, Hyperic and Zenoss. Little four is an obvious play on the big four vendors, incumbent management software market leaders BMC, CA, HP and IBM.
Open source management advocates could be concerned that Qlusters’ passing off OpenQRM to community development and essentially exiting from the open source software game could be a sign of worse things to come. But Qlusters popularity with systems managers and overall success to date could keep its momentum going.
“It has been pleasing and rewarding to see the OpenQRM project grow rapidly since its launch in January 2006, including winning SourceForge’s ‘Project of The Month’ in July 2006. The 120,000 downloads to date are the basis for numerous OpenQRM implementations in data centers globally, and the many articles published in the industry discussing OpenQRM have established it as one of the leading open source solutions for systems provisioning and management,” Qlusters’ Ashman wrote.
