“Open source has always provided a number of benefits, including easing adoption costs, propagating a better understanding of the technology, and allowing for faster evolution and commercialization of products and services based on it,” noted Terry Woloszyn, Founder & CEO, Leeward Security Ltd., in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “This is clearly evident with the OpenStack and CloudStack,” Woloszyn continued, “and others that have been quickly commercialized as offerings such as Rackspace.”
Cloud Computing Journal: The move to cloud isn’t about saving money, it is about saving time. – Agree or disagree?
Terry Woloszyn: It’s actually both. Depending on the type of cloud – SaaS, PaaS, or IaaS, and whether it is private or public – the metrics that are used to determine the savings vary in weighting and importance. For example, the total cost of ownership in selecting, installing, configuring, managing, and ultimately replacing enterprise applications is quite large when compared to utilizing a public cloud SaaS equivalent. In this case, it’s about saving time and money. On the other hand, utilizing a private cloud infrastructure as a host platform for enterprise applications is much more about saving time in provisioning, as the money difference is small, realized only in hardware utilization and platform management cost savings.