Linux Foundation in partnership with IDC conducted a survey in Aug last year, to find out what users really want when it comes to building their cloud infrastructure and platforms and what they expect from vendors. During the survey IDC received responses from 282 The results of the survey confirm that enterprise users feel openness in the cloud is important. They want to participate in an open ecosystem and value open source software, standards and APIs for their cloud infrastructure and platforms.
Four things are evident based on the survey and IDC assessment:
- Windows and Linux users alike insist on collaborative development for the cloud.
- Linux and open source software are dominant in the cloud due to cost, customization, full transparency and the collaborative development model.
- Users are defining what an open cloud means to them. The rise of Linux and open source gave power to users like never before and now they're the ones defining what really the open cloud is.
- Eighty-six percent of respondents said they will either increase or maintain their current spending on linux and open source software in support of private cloud in the next 12 months. Specifically, forty-seven percent said they would add more Linux and open source during that period.
Few examples that indicate that openness of the cloud is indeed where we are moving towards are :-
Internap Network Services Corporation a provider of intelligent IT Infrastructure services has made available a public cloud compute service based on the OpenStack open source platform.
Socrata, provider of cloud-based open data systems has made available “Socrata Open Data Server, Community Edition” as an open source reference implementation for open data standards. Socrata Open Data Server is designed to promote data portability throughout the open data ecosystem and support open source software policies in public organizations around the globe.
[Infographic Source: LinuxFoundation]
