VMware, Piston Cloud pledge to develop open source PaaS offering

30.04.2012
In a pairing of unlikely partners, Piston Cloud Computing announced it will work to support integration of VMware's platform-as-a-service offering Cloud Foundry with OpenStack, the open source infrastructure-as-a-service model.

In recent weeks, the rhetoric between the open source and proprietary cloud offerings in the IaaS market has intensified. But today's move signals a more collegial tone in the PaaS market and what one analyst calls a recognition by providers that integration across multiple clouds and between IaaS and PaaS is key for cloud adoption by end users.

BACKGROUND: Sizzling open vs. proprietary debate heats up the cloud

Piston Cloud announced today the Cloud Provider Interface, an open source project that will allow for integration of OpenStack with Cloud Foundry. Piston Cloud leverages the open source OpenStack code to create an IaaS cloud deployment model aimed at enterprise users. Piston Cloud officials say they hope Cloud Foundry support will be available in a future release of its OS product and plan to submit Cloud Foundry as an incubator project for the full OpenStack project.

Cloud Foundry, meanwhile, recently celebrated its one-year anniversary as an open source PaaS project backed by VMware. Since its founding, VMware has made its desire clear related to Cloud Foundry's integration across multiple public cloud providers. Earlier in April, VMware announced Cloud Foundry BOSH, which is a series of tools that make Cloud Foundry integrations and deployments easier and more automated. Cloud Foundry already supports IaaS models such as VMware's vSphere and AmazonAmazon Web Services. Alles zu Amazon auf CIO.de

The partnership between Piston Cloud and VMware is not totally unexpected though, says Krishnan Subramanian, principal analyst at Rishidot Research, who tracks the cloud industry. There has been buzz about integration of OpenStack with Cloud Foundry given they are both open source projects and Piston Cloud is a natural company to take that leadership position, Subramanian says. Piston Cloud co-founder Josh McKenty is one of the co-founders of the OpenStack project. "These two companies fundamentally disagree on their core philosophies but this is more of a marriage of convenience," Subramanian says.

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