Ubuntu and OpenStack: A Eucalyptus Perspective

By now, it’s well-known that Canonical has chosen to go with OpenStack as the foundation for Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud developments, leaving former tech partner Eucalyptus Systems and its open source, Amazon EC2-compatible private cloud platform in the lurch. But while it’s certainly a setback, it’s important to resist the urge to think of OpenStack’s win as a back-breaking loss for Eucalyptus.

As recently as May 3, 2011, Eucalyptus CEO Marten Mickos – who’s apparently on the road and couldn’t be reached for direct comment by press time – posted a momentum statement to his blog indicating there are more than 25,000 Eucalyptus clouds in the wild. While it’s unclear how many of those are paid Eucalyptus Enterprise Edition deployments and how many are using the free community edition, Mickos did make sure to mention that 21 of the Fortune 100 in 2010 used Eucalyptus software to roll out private clouds.

Here’s what Mickos had to say about Eucalyptus’ international growth:

The number of Eucalyptus clouds is growing by the day. Just last Saturday, 51 Eucalyptus clouds started up around the globe. Around the open source platform, we are building out a professional organization to meet the growing demands in the market. We hired a team in China in January, and as of May we will have feet on the street in India. In Europe, we already have a number of customers up and running.

Notably, that momentum statement didn’t mention Canonical or Ubuntu even once – indicating that this move wasn’t a surprise to Mickos or Eucalyptus. Meanwhile, Eucalyptus followed through on promises to enhance its cloud service provider partner program in 2011.

Reality check: Eucalyptus Systems is privately held, and we may never know how losing Canonical as a backer impacted its bottom line, if at all. But it at least sounds like the company has built enough momentum for itself as a cloud solution developer such that it doesn’t need Ubuntu anymore.

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