Open Source Is the Foundation for Cloud Computing

November 19, 2012

It is common knowledge that open source technology is the basis for many large-scale corporate projects, including Cloud computing. The UK Register printed “The Cloud Made of Penguins: Open Source Goes ‘Industrial Scale’,” an article that explains how the big names in open source are being used. OpenStack Software, a mere child of two years, specializes in storage, networking, plus many more components built on Apache platforms. It has caught the attention of many corporate giants, such as HP for its Cloud and the telecom company Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation. Amazon EC2 is the favorite of Linux servers, mostly for storage. Also do not forget that it is used in infrastructure-as-a-service technology, such as Microsoft Azure.

The article predicts that since the Linux kernel and middleware are not the attention-grabber they used to be, that Cloud-computing projects on the industrial level will begin to make more headlines. Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation pointed out this new idea:

“’The difference now is they are not just obviously tinkering around with how to make a software defined network or block storage file format,’ Zemlin said. ‘These are broad-scale industrial initiatives that are financed by the largest computer companies in the world to create the comments they need to make commercial products.’”

What is surprising is that people find this trend surprising. After technology become a core part of industry, developers puzzle over how it cane be manipulated for other projects. Remember, necessity is the mother of invention and you use the tools you have to make it. Thinking back on how open source search programs were back in the day, LucidWorks saw a need for a powerful and robust, yet economically priced, search application. Using Apache Lucene, LucidWorks created LucidWorks Search and LucidWorks Big Data.

Whitney Grace, November 19, 2012

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Cloud computing, News, Open source

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.