OpenStack cloud gains version, loses Citrix

OpenStack has released Essex, the fifth version of its open source cloud OS that comes loaded with 150 new features, such as a full centralized management dashboard, an identity management system, security enhancements, and more.

Impressive though these new features may be, the announcement has been clouded by Citrix’s curiously timed announcement earlier in the week that it was dropping support for OpenStack to concentrate on developing its CloudStack platform under an Apache license.

Speaking to InfoWorld, Citrix representatives cited two primary reasons for all but abandoning OpenStack in favor of CloudStack: insurmountable technological incompatibilities between the two platforms, and insufficient responsiveness to customer needs on OpenStack’s part.

Citrix emphasized, however, that its newfound commitment to CloudStack should not be construed as either a lack of support or a death sentence for OpenStack. Rather, it creates an opportunity for open source to continue shaping the cloud landscape. “OpenStack doesn’t need to lose for CloudStack to win. There’s a giant and exciting marketing opportunity here,” said Peder Ulander, VP of product marketing for Citrix’s Cloud Platforms Group. “For the first time in history, as far back that I can remember, open source is leading the way into a new market category. This is about proprietary versus open source, and open source is going to win.”

Among Essex’s new features is the first full release of OpenStack Dashboard, code-named Horizon. The dashboard provides users with the ability to access, provision, and automate cloud-based resources through a self-service portal, according to OpenStack. Moreover, the dashboard is designed with extensibility in mind to support plug-ins for third-party products and services.

Also new: the full release ofOpenStack Identity, code-name Keystone, which unifies all of OpenStack’s core projects under a common authentication system. The system provides authorization for multiple log-in credentials, including username/password, token-based, and AWS-style log-ins.

Among other improvements, Essex injects OpenStack Compute (code-named Nova) with enhancement feature parity among tier one hypervisors, improved authorization, and live migration with multihost networking. Nova also boasts contributions to support HPC and additional block-storage options, including support for storage offerings from Nexenta, SolidFire, and NetApp.

On the security front, Essex has improved compliance and data security features. OpenStack Object Storage (aka Swift) offers the ability to expire objects according to an organization’s document-retention policies, for example. Disaster recovery features enjoy a boost as well, and Essex comes with a capability for uploading data directly from authenticated Web pages.

Not surprisingly, OpenStack used today’s announcement as an opportunity to not only highlight the newest features in its cloud platform, but also to tout the fact that the release draws on the contributions of more than 200 developers from 55 different companies.

“We’ve been working with OpenStack for about 15 months, and we’re pleased to see how the Authors file keeps growing with every release,” said Juan J. Martinez, a lead OpenStack developer, in a provided statement. “The number of people contributing code is a fine indicator of good health, supported by the excellent management of the elected technical leaders and the best development practices that translate into lots of fixed bugs, improvements and new functionalities. We’re confident that we made the right decision committing resources to include OpenStack in our business strategy.”

The subtext in all this: Citrix may have been among the biggest contributors, but OpenStack does not need Citrix to survive. Supporters of OpenStack have vigorously made that argument since Citrix revealed its change of course. “You can see with the contributions over the last couple of releases that [Citrix’s] has diminished. That’s been fine. We have had other contributors,” said Jonathan Bryce, chairman of the OpenStack Project Policy Board and co-founder of Rackspace Cloud.

OpenStack’s reps were fairly noncommittal as to CloudStack’s prospects under the Apache Foundation umbrella. “My general viewpoint is that the Apache Foundation is a great place to run an open source project, but I don’t think it makes or breaks a project on its own,” Bryce said.

In that vein, OpenStack’s announcement included the following observation: “Having companies support your announcement is one thing, but building a strong development community and commercial ecosystem where companies are actually contributing code takes time, investment, and the right structure.”

Citrix, for its part, stands steadfastly by its decision to focus its resources on developing CloudStack under the Apache license. According to Sameer Dholakia, group VP and GM for Citrix’s Cloud Platforms Group, the company did not make the decision lightly; rather, it came out of necessity.

The biggest problem, he said, was technological in nature: Citrix wanted to be able to wrap CloudStack around OpenStack but after a thorough analysis between the group’s joint engineering teams, it found that closing the gap would take between one and two years. “We could not afford to wait that long,” said Dholakia. “We have customers and prospects that are wanting a production-ready solution.”

That issue goes hand in hand with to the second problem Citrix identified: inadequate responsiveness on OpenStack’s side to would-be customers’ pressing needs and demands. “At the end of the day, we at Citrix are focused on competing with and beating VMWare in the marketplace around the cloud,” he said.

Citrix did proffer a plan to address its concerns: getting the OpenStack community to consume CloudStack as it core compute engine. Dholakia said Citrix made that offer five or six times, including most recently from the stage of a panel discussion at the recent CloudConnect 2012 conference. “That would have been the ideal answer,” he said.

This story, “OpenStack cloud gains version, loses Citrix,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.