DreamHost Debuts Open Source Cloud IaaS

The open source channel gained a new stronghold in the cloud today with the introduction of DreamCloud, an Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas) cloud platform from DreamHost based on OpenStack, Ceph and other major open source technologies. Read on for details.

As the newest addition to DreamHost’s line of web hosting and cloud products, DreamCompute provides a flexible and dynamic cloud infrastructure for a variety of tasks. DreamHost touts the product as:

Pricing for CloudCompute has not yet been released, but DreamHost promises that the details will prove “very attractive to Internet entrepreneurs and developers” when they appear in the near future.

The Open Source Selling Point

But what most distinguishes DreamCompute from similar offerings in this fiercely competitive niche, according to Dreamhost, are the open source technologies at its core:

DreamHost’s emphasis on the open source foundations of its cloud service is particularly significant given that many of these technologies are relatively new to the commercial world. The OpenStack platform has been around for a while, but it was just last month that channel partners launched the OpenStack Foundation to promote its use in the cloud. Similarly, Ceph dates to 2007, but has only very recently begun appearing in major commercial cloud products.

But while these open source projects may be new to many businesses interested in enterprise class cloud solutions, DreamHost clearly believes the intrinsic value of open source itself will be a major selling point as it develops future products. That makes sense given the other major selling points the company emphasizes for its products, including flexibility and low cost.

Those are two areas in which open source solutions have traditionally excelled. By all indications, they’ll continue to remain vital to the development of open source solutions for the up and coming world of cloud computing.