In the world of cloud computing, the role of open source technology is powerful and impactful. Whether your projects lie within the realm of a public, private, or hybrid cloud, there are free open source tools that can help you provide a complete solution or augment your existing one.
Why is open source good for cloud computing? The BIG reason is in the way open source software stacks empower companies to build exactly what they require, without incurring huge costs.
There are other influencers too; let’s take a look:
Freedom from an expensive licensing model:
Adoption of the cloud has become not just a trend, but a part of business strategy. With it, organizations optimize their IT investments and improve or expand their existing services. Additionally, if an organization can’t afford the expensive licensing model of proprietary software vendors, open source reduces the cost barrier and builds a private cloud.
Existing products like OpenStack, Apache CloudStack, Eucalyptus, and OpenNebula come to mind for this kind of a service.
Facilitating customization:
Custom clouds provide a greater capability for precise solution architecture, application integration needs, security requirements, and real-time business analytics. You can also build a differentiated cloud service to meet customers’ needs.
Driving innovation:
Open source not only supports, but actually encourages innovation in the development of new cloud products. Additionally, the licensing model of open source makes it easier for cloud vendors to scale their infrastructure without any barrier, and come up with their own new cloud offerings.
Deploy on the infrastructure of your choice:
Virtualization, storage, networking, and other layers are not tied to any particular vendor technology infrastructure. This means organizations can leverage efficient storage, smart backups, security, and compliance without any issue of vendor lock-in.
Open standards and more collaboration lead to better quality:
Flexibility and freedom is key to innovation and higher quality output. Collaboration between technology providers and users is a huge advantage to working in the cloud. The support of standard bodies, VCs, and researchers enables new features to be added regularly, and existing features to be regularly tested under strict conditions. This monitoring leads to a higher quality end-product.
It’s exciting to see that open source has become not only a preferred choice but a propeller of innovation for flexible cloud computing solutions. The best examples of companies taking advantage of open source are cloud stack vendors, such as Cloudera, Hortonworks, and Openstack. They innovate with the help of open source stack, and as open source computing grows, so will these businesses.
Vippan Kumar is a Marketing and Communications professional with 9 years experience working in the dynamic B2B marketing environment. He spends his energy in strategizing, writing, reviewing a variety of content for demand generation and pre-sales support. He enjoys developing company literature like web content, whitepapers, case studies, blogs and opinion posts for different channels. He has a keen interest in digital transformation and next-generation technology like IoT, AI, and Analytics. He always likes to learn new skills. Reading, volunteering, and sports are his hobbies.
