Basho, which created the Riak distributed NoSQL database, is the latest company to choose sides in the battle of open source cloud platforms – kind of. The company plans to contribute almost all of the Riak CS source code  to the CloudStack  project. In addition, Basho is working closely with Citrix to make Riak CS a storage option in Citrix’s enterprise version of CloudStack, Citrix CloudPlatform.

Although many headlines suggest Basho has pledged it allegiance to  CloudStack, it hasn’t. CTO Justin Sheehy says the company’s move to CloudStack was driven by requests from customers and integrators   He has made it clear that the effort is just an integration Riak CS is not becoming a dedicated part of CloudStack. Riak CS currently works with OpenStack now and will continue to support it and other competing frameworks like Eucalyptus into the future.Sheehy continued, “I think customers realize that there’s no obvious one sure solution out there for them. And, that’s a good thing for the customer – it means they have choices.”

Basho is making the right choice by not choosing. Until it’s clear which technologies will prevail, vendors should not risk alienating customers in the very competitive cloud market. If Basho was to make an actual decision though, OpenStack might not be at the top of its partnership list. OpenStack already has its own native storage technology, Swift . OpenStack  has a pluggable architecture that allows adopters to leverage a different storage provider, but many will invariably stick with the default. In addition, less than a month ago, Basho’s director of product management, Shanley Kane, abandoned her attempt to join the OpenStack Foundation board after alleged harassment by an OpenStack  board member.

Cloud standards are important, and their success is often determined by the level vendor adoption.  In the past few weeks major vendors like VMware  have elected to join CloudStack competitor OpenStack. Some vendors like Red Hat, IBM, SUSE and Cisco are taking the same approach as Basho and supporting both efforts. OpenStack currently to has greater momentum and visibility than alternative efforts, but the project’s number one position isn’t assured. The industry is evolving too fast to make long-term predictions.  Hopefully, the competition won’t just bruise and polish egos, it will lead to more standardized cloud services and reduce the risk for vendor lock-in.

Contributor: Maria Deutscher