OStatic

On the heels of the launch and funding of open source cloud computing player Eucalyptus Systems, the company has now announced its first commercial product. The Eucalyptus Enterprise Edition (EEE) enables customers to implement an on-premise Eucalyptus cloud with VMware'VSphere virtualization platform, and ESX hypervisor.

VSphere is VMware's cloud operating system. Not only will Eucalyptus' EEE solution allow on-premise Eucalyptus clouds on VMware's platform, but it also supports other hypervisors, including Xen and KVM. With EEE, users can leverage all of these environments, and additonally develop applications compatible with Amazon's EC2.

Analysts and observers are still digesting the recent news of VMware's acquisition of SpringSource for $420 million, and I continue to find interesting perspectives cropping up. As we discussed here, the move has the potential to put the squeeze on Red Hat, especially in the application server and enterprise software development markets. It also gives VMware a lot more credibility with developers, because SpringSource's Spring Framework is a popular enterprise Java programming environment, it maintains the Apache Tomcat Java app server project, and more. It also gives VMware a strong presence in the open source arena, when it has been seriously threatened by open source virtualization offerings.

This week, though, Todd Weiss, writing on Linux.com, discussed how many analysts see the move as allowing VMware to tie virtualization directly to applications without requiring a separate operating system. Could VMware have its eye on the fast-growing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) arena, aiming to deliver virtualized apps that users and IT administrators can hop in and out of without a tie to a parent OS??

Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, and the analysts at RedMonk presented the results of a recent survey conducted on Ubuntu's use in server deployments. Nearly 7,000 people (representing the same number of organizations) participated in the survey, which was promoted on Ubuntu's web site and several Linux server-specific forums.

Canonical's marketing head, Gerry Carr, says that the survey is essential reading for any organization using (or considering using) Ubuntu's Server Edition. After taking a closer look at the survey, I'd recommend it to anyone interested in current server technologies, or where the server market is headed -- even if Ubuntu Server isn't part of the equation.