There are CloudStack, Eucalyptus, and a few other OpenStack competitors. With all the momentum of OpenStack, it might seem that these open source alternatives are little more than also-rans, doomed to drop further and further behind the burgeoning leader. But there\u2019s more to this story. This is no techie my-open-source-is-better-than-your-open-source battle of principle, of interest only to the cognoscenti. On the contrary: big players are now involved, and they\u2019re placing increasingly large bets.
\nLook around the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) market. Notice that elephant in the corner? That\u2019s Amazon Web Services (AWS). The IaaS market simply doesn\u2019t make sense unless you realize that AWS essentially invented IaaS. And by invented, we mean actually got it to work. Which if you think about it, is rather atypical for most technology vendors. Your average software vendor will identify a new market opportunity, take some old stuff they\u2019ve been struggling to sell, give it a nice new coat of PowerPoint, and shoehorn it into the new market. If customers bite, then the vendor will devote resources into making the product actually do what it\u2019s supposed to do. Eventually. We hope. <\/p>\n