Stated politely, Canonical is transitioning the Ubuntu Cloud to OpenStack — an open source cloud standard — as a foundation technology. Stated bluntly, Ubuntu is de-emphasizing Eucalyptus, another open source cloud standard. The obvious question: Is the open source cloud industry’s balance of power shifting from Eucalyptus to OpenStack?
According to an official statement from Canonical:
“Today, the Ubuntu project announced that future versions of the Ubuntu Cloud will use OpenStack as a foundation technology. OpenStack, the rapidly growing, open-source, cloud platform effort founded by Rackspace and NASA in 2010, has secured more than 53 commercial companies including Dell, Internap, Intel and Cisco to join the IaaS cloud computing initiative since launching. Ubuntu officially joined the OpenStack initiative in February of this year, but it is not currently providing commercial services for it as part of the releases of its most recent Linux-based operating system, Ubuntu Server and Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud. However, with this announcement, OpenStack will become a core part of future releases. While no longer the foundation technology for the Ubuntu Cloud, Eucalyptus will remain within Ubuntu and will be available for users who prefer this technology.”
TalkinCloud has often wondered if OpenStack and Eucalyptus would emerge as open source cloud rivals. But Eucalyptus CEO Marten Mikos has always downplayed such as scenario, stating that the two open source offerings could live in harmony.
But Canonical’s decision to emphasize OpenStack over Eucalyptus raises questions about such harmony. Canonical went on to state:
“The current releases of Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC), which is based on Eucalyptus, are not impacted: Eucalyptus will continue to be a available for download and will be supported by Canonical. This means that customers who have deployed private clouds based on existing Ubuntu releases will continue to receive maintenance, and in the case of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS this will continue through to April 2015. Eucalyptus will remain within Ubuntu and will be available for users who prefer this technology. For customers with existing private cloud deployments, Ubuntu will provide tools to automate the migration process to the Ubuntu Server 11.10 release when it is released in October 2011.
To Canonical’s credit, the company is trying to be tactful with its statements about OpenStack and Eucalyptus support. But the reality is as follows: OpenStack is now Canonical’s preferred open source cloud standard. That’s a setback for Eucalyptus.
Of course, it’s important to give Eucalyptus equal time on this subject. Canonical is only one company in the much broader cloud ecosystem. Eucalyptus has partnerships with a range of IT companies. TalkinCloud is pursuing Eucalyptus perspectives now.
Follow Talkin’ Cloud via RSS, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for Talkin’ Cloud’s Weekly Newsletter, Webcasts and Resource Center. Read our editorial disclosures here.
The 
Attempting to implement UEC with 10.04 and 10.10, I stated on the forums directly to one of the UEC product managers that I thought that Eucalyptus was way too buggy and poorly implemented to be part of an Ubuntu release. Quite simply, I found myself working around even the most simply scenarios and spending 5x as much time on the forums working around ridiculously basic configuration and installation issues rather than being productive.
Suffice it to say that I am not surprised.
Huh, as I feared before that Ubuntu will kick Eucalyptus out.
But I love it. Eucalyptus is quite sux to manage. Looking forward for OpenStack (I hope it will be MUCH better than Eucalyptus)
As there usually is, there is more to this story than what is currently divulged. As products usually do, Euca has matured nicely in last couple of years. The question I have is how long will it take OpenStack to get to where Eucalyptus is today…and, when that happens, how far along the maturation arch will Eucalyptus be? This actually says way more about Canonical than Eucalyptus. Competing for Enterprise mind-share against Red Hat Ubuntu can not survive too many changes of heart in the commercial space.
I have to disagree that Eucalyptus “has matured nicely”. As a software engineer, I am dismayed by the lack of quality and testing. Euca seems to be tested only in the a single, “perfect” environment.
But that’s why there is more than one product to do the job.
Rick, I, too, am a software engineer with decades of experience. I’ve also been quite active on the Euca forums helping people, perhaps like yourself, get past their issues. In that process I’ve uncovered bugs, not with Euca, (well, ok, some with euca) but with KVM. Strictly speaking, from what I recall the ones with euca weren’t really bugs, per se, they were unimplemented features. By that I mean it wasn’t they didn’t do it correctly, they didn’t do it at all….it wasn’t a feature.
My point wasn’t that you can’t work around the problems; I did. My point mostly centered on installation, configuration, documentation, etc. I didn’t want to sound pompous; I have managed groups all over the world that have developed over 50 released products over the years, including many used my most of the Fortune 500. Eucalyptus’ installation, configuration, and lack of testing is atrocious.
Rick
Rick, Henry, Walt: Thanks for weighing in. We share additional Eucalyptus perspectives here. And we hope to speak with Eucalyptus CEO Marten Mickos in the next few days for deeper perspectives.
-jp
Joe Panettieri
Editorial Director
TalkinCloud and Nine Lives Media Inc.