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Tech giant HP is acquiring Eucalyptus, makers of an open source system that helps companies build cloud computing services in their own data centers.
Following the deal, Eucalyptus CEO Marten Mickos will become senior vice president and general manager of HP’s cloud business, reporting directly to HP CEO Meg Whitman. HP’s current head of cloud, CTO Martin Fink, will shift his attention to other areas of the company, such as such as the blue skies research division HP Labs.
Marten Mickos. Andrew Smart of AC Cooper
According to Bill Hilf, senior vice president of product, services, and strategy for HP’s cloud business, who will report to Mickos, the acquisition provides a needed leader for the company’s cloud operation and additional engineering talent needed to expand and hone the company’s cloud software and services—technology that provides a meaning of building and hosting large online software applications. But, he says, it also fills a gap in HP’s technology. It provides a way for customers to dovetail private cloud services in their own data centers with the popular public cloud service from Amazon.
“The really what Eucalyptus provides: AWS interoperability,” he says, referring to Amazon Web Services, the company’s sweeping collection of cloud offering. “It lets customers build an app in their own data center, and then they can, say, push that same application to AWS.”
HP is just one of many tech giants seeking to offer software that will let business span private and public services in this way. From VMware to Microsoft, these are companies aiming to serve companies that want to keep some technology in house—for reasons of cost, security, and privacy—but also take advantage of public cloud services, which provide a more convenient and flexible way of building and running software applications
At first blush, the move seems odd. HP’s cloud efforts have been focused on OpenStack, an open source cloud system that competes with the similar technology offered by Eucalyptus. OpenStack was originally created by NASA to overcome limitations in Eucalyptus’ technology. And Mickos has long been critical of OpenStack, calling it the “Soviet Union” of cloud technology.
But the move isn’t as unlikely as some might think. Mickos has recently changed his tune regarding the competition. “OpenStack is (in my humble opinion) the name of a phenomenon of enormous proportions,” he wrote in a blog post explaining why he was keynoting an OpenStack conference. He still expressed concern about the collective governance of OpenStack—which is what led him to compare OpenStack with the Soviet Union—but he wrote that he actually wanted Eucalyptus to become a real contributor to the OpenStack project.
The thrust of his post was that OpenStack and Eucalyptus fill two very different needs. Eucalyptus helps companies build private clouds that are compatible with Amazon’s public clouds. OpenStack, on the other hand, helps power web giants like eBay who aren’t worried about Amazon compatibility. “Eucalyptus is the name of a tightly focused piece of software that serves a unique use case,” he wrote.
Mickos’ assessment of the differences between OpenStack and Eucalyptus is debatable. Cloudscaling, for example, offers a version of OpenStack designed for Amazon compatibility. But his new found love for the project it does show how much progress OpenStack has made, and how much his own view has changed.
Additional reporting by Cade Metz
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