From the ‘Cloud Rules’ files:
You can add SUSE to the long list of vendors that have an OpenStack solution.
OpenStack is the open source cloud platform that now has well over 80 member companies participating. What SUSE is doing is interesting, in that they’re making an OpenStack distribution available.
So instead of just ‘pledging’ to work with OpenStack and have some kind of OpenStack based solution, SUSE is actually providing OpenStack, running on SUSE Enterprise Linux.
This is particularly interesting to me, since to date, Ubuntu Linux has been the reference platform for OpenStack. For those enterprises that need or want the enterprise support and certifications that SUSE has (think SAP and 10 years of support, which are both things that Ubuntu does NOT have) there is now a viable choice.
What’s even more interesting is how SUSE is delivering this OpenStack distribution. SUSE is using their SUSE Studio as the platform to distribute (and likely build)OpenStack. That means that enterprises can potentially custom build their own OpenStack distributions in SUSE Studio. That’s an incredibly powerful model and one that no other vendor currently offers.
In fact, Piston Computing, which is another OpenStack startup, recently told me that running the stock Ubuntu for OpenStack might actually introduce security risks, since it adds components that aren’t necessarily required to run OpenStack. With SUSE Studio, I could see devs building really optimized versions of OpenStack that would help limit that risk.
It’s not surprising to me to see SUSE jump on the OpenStack bandwagon, it makes sense for them to leverage an existing and very popular open source stack. Don’t forget that Ubuntu did the same thing with Eucalyptus (and now OpenStack too).
OpenStack has become the default go-to standard for the open source cloud. Sure there are other choices (ask Red Hat, they’ll be happy to talk about their options…), but with such a wide vendor ecosystem of participation, at this point it’s likely a forgone conclusion that OpenStack is the way to go.