Rackspace and NASA recently launched OpenStack, a cloud software stack that has already generated significant buzz in open source and cloud computing circles. What it offers, in a nutshell, is an entryway for hosting providers that want to provide a cloud service to their customers, much like Parallels Virtuozzo opened up virtual private servers to Web hosting companies.
OpenStack offers the promise of do-it-yourself clouds in a secure, private test lab before moving to either private cloudor public cloud, along with insight into the real security issues behind cloud computing and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). OpenStack has been hailed as the most significant development in cloud computing to date. What doesn't it offer?
A tie-in to the number-one cloud provider, Amazon, for one. For that, you'd have to turn to Eucalyptus, the other open source cloud computing product on the market. Eucalyptus has been around for nearly three years, a long time in terms of IaaS products. It was founded out of a research project in the Computer Science Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and became a for-profit business in 2009.
