Imitation, Flattery and the Real Cloud OS

It has been said that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. If that is true, then we are certainly feeling flattered, but that feeling is vying neck and neck with a feeling of confusion. Earlier today, HP announced their foray into the “CloudOS” space with an OpenStack-based offer that purports to be a real “game-changer” according to the VP of marketing for converged cloud. All the buzzword lingo aside, the promises of game changing seem equal parts familiar and perplexing.

Familiar:  SVP Saar Gillai promises that they will unify their on-premises cloud software and cloud services under the same architecture to help customers bridge between private cloud and public cloud.  Sounds a lot like what we’ve been talking about with Windows Azure and Windows Server for a while, even to the point of borrowing the “CloudOS” moniker. 

Perplexing:  The concept of wrapping OpenStack to assist with portability feels like suspenders and a belt.  It’s odd that it would take such a wrapper to ensure that customers could easily move workloads, since that is exactly what OpenStack suggests it does on its own.  I’m not sure if this foreshadows the fractionalization of OpenStack, but it’s certainly worth tracking. 

I know, I know, “hello pot, this is kettle…” Yes, a Microsoft person is tossing a barb on buzzword bingo  and an abstract marketing pitch.  But, given the very real traction we have with the, um, Cloud OS (just last week we talked a lot about it)—Windows Azure has over 240,000 customers and is adding 7,000 per week, we’re putting the heat on VMware with Windows Server and System Center,  and we’ve been walking the walk, I think we have earned this one.  You?