Can Cloud Foundry Be "All Clouds to All Comers"?

By Jeremy Geelan	Article Rating:
April 13, 2011 03:00 AM EDT	Reads:	588

A round-up of what is being written and said about Cloud Foundry, the bold VMware OpenPaaS initiative unveiled Tuesday by VMware CEO Paul Maritz. RightScale CTO Thorsten Von Eicken called it "one of the more exciting cloud developments in a while."

"It remains to be seen how VMWare will handle the inevitable conflict between being a cloud provider and hoping to be the provider of infrastructure software for other providers. Case in point: VMForce, the joint offering announced by VMWare and Salesforce.com several months ago.
Officially, both companies say everything is on track for the VMForce offering, and VMWare says VMForce is "powered by CloudFoundry". But as I am quoted in this...article, the companies were already on a collision course, especially after Salesforce.com's Heroku acquisition."

GEVA PERRY, Top 100 Cloud Blogger, writing at "Thinking Out Cloud"

"If VMware can make Java just one of the many technologies that run on their clouds and if they can allow anyone to use their cloud software without having to give a dime to VMware or use their tools ...they should have a good chance at building a big cloud ecosystem."
MICHAEL COTÉ, writing at "Coté's People Over Process"

"Flexibility is the biggest selling factor behind the cloud and with this offering that’s what VMware wants to offer. It’s pretty compelling."

STACEY HIGGINBOTHAM, writing at GigaOm.com

"VMware’s Cloud Foundry release has the potential to be quite a watershed moment for the PaaS world. It provides many of the core pieces that are needed to build a PaaS in an open source form "

THORSTEN VON EICKEN, RightScale CTO, writing at the RightScale company blog

"The beauty of creating a competitive marketplace of utility service providers is that it opens up a huge range of opportunities from service provider, support, assurance, brokerage, exchange, marketplace and a dozen more. Being at the heart of this, which is where VMware will be, means they are well positioned to take advantage. It's a bold move, perfectly timed and well executed."

SIMON WARDLEY, Top 100 Cloud Blogger, writing at "Bits or Pieces"

"Cloud Foundry plays on the number of acquisitions that VMware has made in the past few years. Spring has been a jewel for VMware but now the other parts are falling into place. RabbitMQ and Gemstone are just two examples. The open play is a smart one. And the flexibility of the platform is key to its success.
Cloud Foundry will without a doubt pose a real challenge to Google App Engine and other platforms such as Heroku and even Windows Azure. But this is a competitive space with new startups such as DotCloud offering a similar flexibility."

ALEX WILLIAMS, writing at ReadWriteCloud

"To date, there hasn’t been a strong, open PaaS destination for Java. The millions of Java developers have largely been left to fend for themselves in the cloud, with weaker options than have been available, to, say, Ruby developers. We’re changing that.
With Cloud Foundry, VMware is providing a convenient and compelling destination for Java applications in public and private cloud."

ROD JOHNSON, VMware, writing at the SpringSource Team Blog

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Jeremy Geelan is President & COO of Cloud Expo, Inc. He is Conference Chair of the worldwide Cloud Expo series, of the Virtualization Conference series, and of the upcoming UlitzerLIVE! event. During his tenure with SYS-CON Media, he launched Cloud Computing Journal, Web 2.0 Journal, AJAX & RIA Journal and other leading SYS-CON titles. From 2000-6, as first editorial director and then group publisher of SYS-CON Media, he was responsible for the development of all new titles and i-technology portals for the firm. From 2006 to 2010, as Sr. VP of Editorial & Events, he had complete responsibility for the content of SYS-CON's events portfolio. He regularly represents SYS-CON Media & Events at conferences and trade shows, speaking to technology audiences both in North America and overseas. He is executive producer and presenter of "Power Panels with Jeremy Geelan" on SYS-CON.TV.

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