Red Hat Warns Government About Cloud Lock-In

By samdizzy

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Bohannon penned the blog to recap a new TechAmerica report, which seeks to promote policies that accelerate cloud computing’s adoption. The blog is mostly upbeat and optimistic about cloud computing. But Bohannon also mentions some “strong headwinds” against cloud computing — including:

Microsoft Revisited

By pointing to the 1980s, Bohannon is either referring to (A) old proprietary mainframes, (B) proprietary minicomputers or (C) the rise of DOS and then Microsoft Windows. My bet is C, since Red Hat back in 2009 warned its own customers and partners about potential lock-in to Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud for platform as a service (PaaS).

For its part, Microsoft has previously stated that Windows Azure supports a range of software development standards, including Java and Ruby on Rails.

Still, Bohannon reinforces his point by pointing government officials to open cloud efforts like the Open Virtualization Alliance (OVA); Red Hat’s own OpenShift PaaS effort; and Red Hat’s CloudForms for Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS).

Concluded Bohannon: “The greatest challenge is to make sure that with the cloud, choice grows rather than shrinks.  This effort will be successful so long as users are kept first in order of priority, and remain in charge.”

I understand Bohannon’s concern about cloud lock-in. But I’m not ready to sound the alarm over Windows Azure. Plenty of proprietary software companies and channel partners are shifting applications into the Azure cloud. We’ll continue to check in with partners to measure the challenges and dividends.