Citrix Sharpens Focus on CloudStack, Puts Brakes on OpenStack
If you want a good illustration of how quickly things are moving among open source cloud computing platforms, consider Citrix and its cloud initiatives. In May of last year, we covered the company's announcement of its Olympus open source cloud platorm, based on OpenStack. OpenStack, of course, has more than 150 companies backing it. Then, in February of this year, we covered Citrix's announcement of the CloudStack 3 open source cloud platform. And now, Citrix is moving full steam ahead with the next phase of its CloudStack strategy.
According to Citrix's latest announcement, CloudStack will be submitted to the Apache Software Foundation as an open source Apache project:
"Elevating CloudStack into a full open source Apache project will further accelerate its mission of delivering a powerful, proven, hypervisor-agnostic platform that helps customers of all sizes build true Amazon-style clouds. CloudStack brings to Apache more than 30,000 community members, thousands of certified apps, and hundreds of production clouds, collectively generating more than $1 billion in cloud revenue from some of the biggest brands in the industry. To capitalize on this market momentum, Citrix will also deliver a commercially supported release of the proposed Apache CloudStack distribution as the centerpiece of its cloud infrastructure product portfolio."
Citrix CloudStack 3 is released today under Apache License 2.0, and the CloudStack.org community will become part of the Apache Incubator program. Citrix will support the project through engineering, community support and marketing. Separately, Citrix announced that it is now a Platinum sponsor of the Apache Software Foundation.
"The move means Citrix is abandoning its work on its OpenStack distribution."
What a difference a year makes in the cloud. Last year, stepping up what is already fierce competition in the race to provide cloud computing platform infrastructure, Citrix announced that it had completed the acquisition of Cloud.com. Cloud.com had many notable customers who favored its cloud stack infrastructure, which was centered on OpenStack, including GoDaddy and Zynga.
Now, clearly, Citrix is squarely focused on its own, branded CloudStack platform. You can find out much more about CloudStack's next phase here.