UPDATED 10:41 EDT / AUGUST 17 2011

NEWS

Canonical, Dell, EnStratus and Opscode Join Cloud Foundry

Canonical recently announced Ubuntu support for OpenStack. Now it’s joining Cloud Foundry to provide Ubuntu support for VMware’s open cloud platform and access to millions of desktops.

It joins Dell, EnStratus and Opscode, which all are joining Cloud Foundry, one of the fastest growing platforms in the market.

The news adds some additional color to what we will see at VMworld. And that’s a huge emphasis on the cloud with Cloud Foundry playing a starring role.

Cloud Foundry has had good momentum over the past few months since its launch. This latest news adds to that recognition.

The Cloud Foundry blog provides some details about the partnership:

Canonical: Cloud Foundry will soon be pre-installed on millions of Ubuntu desktops. This will start with the 11/10 release for both the VMC Client and VCAP server. Canonical says it has 12 million active desktop users. Canonical hints that this is just the start of the relationship.

One potential is the further integration of Ensemble, which will be part of the 11.10 release.

From Canonical:

In Ubuntu 11.10 we’ve added client and server deployment tools using Ensemble that allow you to easily deploy a single node server in minutes as well as a distributed, multi node environment quickly and easily to create a production quality PaaS. You can deploy applications in AWS, Openstack or on your own internal servers.

Dell: A Crowbar module, also known as a barclamp, is coming to Cloud Foundry. Crowbar automates the installation and configuration of open-source cloud software onto bare metal hardware system. With Crowbar, developers many install and configure Cloud Foundry. This includes multi-node configurations over time, leveraging the open source Crowbar framework.

It’s this from Dell Senior Cloud Architect Rob Hirschfeld that I find compelling:

  1. Big companies are acting like start-ups.  Both Crowbar and Cloud Foundry are projects that focus on putting the core functionality out quickly to prove their value proposition, get feedback, and change the game.  This collaboration is positive proof of these companies being Agile and starting a project Lean.
  2. Big companies are acting in the open.  Both Dell via Crowbar and VMware via Cloud Foundry are contributing their source and working on it in the open.

EnStratus: George Reese runs this company. He has a brilliant crew who have devised a sophisticated approach to cloud management.

Cloud Foundry can now be deployed and managed on any of the 18 different clouds EnStratus supports, as well as any vSphere or vCloud director environments. More here.

Opscode: You can tell there’s a big push at Cloud Foundry on ease of use. Opscode is a company that provides automated scripts based on Chef, a an open-source integration framework. The Cloud Foundry team created Chef recipes for the platform to make it easier for the user. These are being published on the Chef community site and integrated into Opscode Hosted Chef (OHC).

Services Angle

This is a big deal for a few reasons. It’s a major investment for VMware into its open-source platform with very credible partners. It gives Cloud Foundry distribution. And it seeks to make the platform easier to use by automating the configuration and installation process.

For service providers, it means Cloud Foundry is further validated as an open platform that can be integrated into most any enterprise.


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