Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Telemetry (Ceilometer) A single point of contact for billing and metering systems across
current and future OpenStack components.
Orchestration (Heat) A template-based system for orchestrating multiple composite
cloud applications.
Proprietary
It seems that we have discussed so much about open-source solutions that it might sound
like this topic is pro open source. That is actually correct, but we realize that open source is
not often the panacea or “cure-all” that others make it out to be. Because if that were truly
the case, it would be the only type of product out there. It's not, though, simply because in
some aspects proprietary products may be exactly what an organization needs. It has been
this way since the beginning and will be for the foreseeable future. Open source is simply
an alternative, and like all alternatives, there are pros and cons.
If you look around the Internet and read about open-source versus proprietary cloud
infrastructure and providers, you will immediately see the great divide that the industry
is currently in. The question is often in the selection of proprietary solutions versus the
broadly accepted OpenStack solutions. The argument is always customer lock-in. But is
this still an issue now? When an organization engages in cloud computing, it becomes a
sort of marriage between the organization (the customer) and the cloud service provider,
with the service-level agreement (SLA) serving as the prenuptial agreement. When both
parties decide on a union and sign that contract, it becomes a till-death-do-us-part thing.
It's a very significant commitment, and if the service is good enough and the price just
right and if the provider honors the SLA, a customer will most often stay with the pro-
vider. So in most cases, lock-in is not going to be an issue.
This is not like buying a car, where you might want a different brand if ever you want a
new car. Even if the customer comes up with a need that the service provider does not yet
offer, it would still be reluctant to separate from the provider. Besides, most likely the pro-
vider will just develop that function and provide that service simply because it doesn't want
to lose a customer.
There really is no reason to switch providers unless the new provider you are switching
to is light years ahead in technology and is free or at least offers its services at incredibly
cheaper rates than the current provider. The reality, though, is that providers are all neck
and neck in terms of technology, and when one drops prices, others will follow suit within
hours. Such is usually the case between Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Rackspace. So
now when you look at the cloud market ecosystem, you see service providers with very sim-
ilar functions and offerings at very competitive prices. This ensures that the need to switch
vendors periodically is really close to nonexistent.
A lot of service providers offer similar services that are sometimes cus-
tomizable, and they often try to one-up the competition, so it would be
a good idea to compare providers and make sure they know that this is
exactly what you are doing.
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