OpenStack Strikes Back Against Citrix CloudStack Claims

In May 2011, Citrix announced an effort called Project Olympus to provide a commercial implementation of the open source OpenStack cloud platform. Less than a year later, Citrix is killing Project Olympus in favor of its own open source effort called CloudStack.

Sameer Dholakia, group VP and GM of Cloud Platforms at Citrix, explained during a press conference, that it is Citrix’s view that when it comes to cloud technologies, being open is the key. Dholakia admitted that focusing on CloudStack and moving away from OpenStack is a departure from its original plans for building on top of OpenStack. According to Dholakia, the OpenStack path was not viable due to organizational issues and technical maturity concerns.

Dholakia also claimed that OpenStack does not support the Amazon APIs, which would make for a compatibility challenge. In his view, OpenStack is interested only in establishing its own set of cloud APIs as opposed to working with existing industry specifications. OpenStack executives, however, disagree.

“We have had Amazon compatibility since the beginning,” Jonathan Bryce, chairman of the Project Policy Board for OpenStack told InternetNews.com. “In the most recent OpenStack release, there were about 150 contributions to the Amazon APIs from 24 developers. So it’s definitely a part of OpenStack that is alive and well.”

Read the full story at ServerWatch:
Citrix Walks Away from OpenStack, Moves to Apache CloudStack

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.