What it means to you

April 20, 2011, 3:08 PM — It's unlikely that hordes of VMware, Citrix or Microsoft Hyper-V users will flock to open-source virtualization or cloud-computing platform as an alternative to the hypervisors and virtualized infrastructure-management software they've already chosen, analysts say. So where does open source fit in the cloud world? Think lock-in and migration flexibility.

Cloud computing clients will want to investigate open-source cloud software for the same reason they are eager to have cloud- interoperability standards developed -- to help them avoid being locked in to a single cloud vendor and to make it easier to integrate apps, virtual machines or other components from external clouds or those of its business partners, says James Staten, vice president and principle analyst at Forrester.

More intriguing: There's a good opportunity the introduction of a second major open-source cloud product, CloudFoundry, from the leading proprietary cloud vendor, VMware, indicates there will be a major structural change in the market for cloud computing that will make cloud services viable during cloud software becomes a commodity, says Chris Wolf, technology VP at Gartner.

The PaaS market

Cloud Foundry does open the PaaS market by adding a big player that supports more than the .NET applications Microsoft's Azure does, Wolf says. However it as well sets the stage for a big shakeup in the cloud-computing market.

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