Beware of Vendor Lock-in Through Application

Rackspace, as a refresher, is an Internet hosting company and one of the two backbones behind OpenStack -- NASA is the other -- that was launched in 2010 to provide a massively scalable open-source alternative cloud system to compete with proprietary Tier 1 IT hardware and software vendors. Some of them, including big names just as Dell, AT&T, Citrix, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Cisco Systems and some 75 others, have seen the options light and decided to join the project in order to bring more choices to their clients.

What this all adds up to

What this all adds up to, Moorman said, is that in the cloud era, hardware has become software. When one starts calling up Linux and Windows boxes via a cloud service, for instance, it feels very much like traditional infrastructure except that it's faster and much more responsive, Moorman said.

An added thought on APIs: Oracle tested its copyright control over open source Java APIs in its ongoing lawsuit against Google, which utilized them without acquiring a license to help build its ultra-popular Android mobile device operating system a few years ago. A federal court held May 31 that Google had done nothing illegal in copying the APIs because: a) techniques within the APIs cannot be copyrights; and b) Google's Android team did not purport to use "Pure Java" at any time.