Red Hat tries to catch Cloud Foundry by adding .Net and SQL Server capabilities to its open source PaaS project.
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Red Hat, in a move to lay its OpenShift platform-as-a-service on a more equal footing with Cloud Foundry, now works with Microsoft C#, Microsoft .Net applications, and the Microsoft SQL Server database.
One of the compelling aspects of Cloud Foundry, started by VMware as an open source PaaS platform, is its ability to supply development and deployment services to both Linux and Windows applications.
Some wary open source users have suggested in online comments that this must mean there are Microsoft moles inside Red Hat, guiding development efforts. But Uhuru Software executives say that isn’t the case. The compatibility is achieved by utilizing code developed by Uhuru that enables an OpenShift server to acknowledge .Net applications and SQL Server dependencies and launch them on a Windows Server. The code might be donated as open source to the OpenShift Origin project, which produces the community, non-product version of OpenShift.
The capability will find its way into the Origin version first, without a date set for its appearance in Red Hat’s online OpenShift PaaS service or OpenShift Enterprise product for installation behind the enterprise firewall. That development is probably going to return later, said Joe Fernandes, Red Hat’s senior product manager, and Matt Hicks, director of OpenShift engineering, in an interview. But they couldn’t say when.
[Desire to learn more about how OpenShift competes with VMware and Cloud Foundry? See Red Hat Takes On VMware For PaaS Crown.]
Nevertheless, the move was greeted with cheers — and some jeers — by non-Red Hat developers. Enterprise developers often produce applications in Java, to run on Linux servers that use Windows technologies for his or her end-user front ends. They said it’d be a tremendous breakthrough for them so as to work in both sets of technologies on one PaaS platform.
“It is a extremely smart move by Red Hat. The prevailing enterprise customer has an awfully large investment in Java and in .NET technology,” said someone called “Jekram” on March 6 based on a blog post by Chris Morgan, technical director of the OpenShift partner ecosystem at Red Hat.
“That is what makes it so powerful,” says Fernandes. “Developers shall be ready to build a Ruby and a .Net application at the same platform.”
Uhuru is notable for bringing expertise in Microsoft technologies to open source PaaS platforms. It did so earlier for Cloud Foundry, that’s within the strategy of splitting far from the EMC and VMware subsidiary, Pivotal, to become a PaaS with an open source foundation behind it. Cloud Foundry also had Iron Foundry as a subproject within its ranks. It was started by Jared Wray as CTO of Tier 3, a cloud services company that was acquired by CenturyLink. Wray also wanted a joint development platform and got one established by starting Iron Foundry.
Fernandes said contributors to OpenShift Origin, including Red Hat’s own developers, have expertise in more technologies, corresponding to Linux containerization and Linux kernels so that you can assist in making the mixing of .Net and Linux technologies more useful ultimately.
“Cloud Foundry can’t match the expertise of OpenShift in Java middleware, Linux kernels, and Linux containerization,” Fernandes told us, in a swipe at what has emerged as a right away and potentially powerful PaaS competitor.
IBM, HP, SAP, Rackspace, EMC, and VMware are all backing Cloud Foundry and contributing dollars toward the creation of its foundation. Joshua McKenty, CTO of OpenStack cloud software supplier, Piston, has predicted Red Hat would be compelled to hitch Cloud Foundry, as a result of strength of its use case and backers, and bet $10 this will achieve this by the tip of 2014.
Both PaaS platforms, however, are examples of the way development and deployment will change inside the presence of cloud services. They may help speed development with cloud-based tools and simplicity deployment with cloud-based assistance. The backers behind each PaaS expect at the least a few of the developers in its camp will deploy to compatible cloud services, consisting of those running Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the KVM hypervisor as a manager of enterprise workloads and people running VMware virtual machines and different Linuxes as their host environment.
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Charles Babcock is an editor-at-large for InformationWeek, having joined the publication in 2003. He’s the previous editor-in-chief of Digital News, former software editor of Computerworld and previous technology editor of Interactive Week. He’s a graduate of Syracuse … View Full Bio
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