During Red Hat Summit in Chicago, CEO Jim Whitehurst and Executive VP Paul Cormier warned attendees not to get locked into virtualization and cloud initiatives involving Microsoft Windows Azure and VMware. Here’s a recap of the morning keynotes.
Whitehurst opened up the morning by warning attendees about antiquated software modes of the 20th century that can’t keep pace with today’s fast-moving development and user needs. While Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and others are pitching visions, said Whitehurst, Red Hat will continue to listen to customers and deliver new value back to them. Instead of forcing a complete architecture on customers, Red Hat will continue to promote an “architecture of participation,” said Whitehurst.
Next up, Executive VP Paul Cormier gave attendees a quick IT history lesson. He asserted that customers have gotten locked in — over and over again — at the hardware, operating system, middleware and application levels. Cormier was quick to insist that Red Hat freed customers at the operating system level in 2002 with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, at the middleware level with JBoss in 2006 and now at the SOA level with JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform.
Trouble Ahead?
Still, Cormier expressed concerns that customers could get locked in once again as they evaluate cloud strategies from VMware and Microsoft’s emerging Windows Azure cloud service.
But in Microsoft’s defense, the software giant has publicly stated that the Windows Azure cloud will support open source offerings like MySQL. And SugarCRM CEO Larry Augustin recently said the open source CRM provider also is willing to give Windows Azure a look.
Nevertheless, Whitehurst and Cormier insisted market trends favor Red Hat’s subscription model approach. Cormier noted that roughly 80 percent of all commercial software solutions will be based on open source by 2010, according to a Gartner estimate.
Back with more thoughts from Red Hat Summit later today.
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Tags: JBoss World | Microsoft Windows Azure | Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst | Red Hat Summit | Red Hat Virtualization | Red Hat VP Paul Cormier | Red Hat vs Microsoft | Red Hat vs VMware | rhsummit | VMware Cloud | Windows Azure Cloud
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Makes perfect sense to keep a platform, the layers of software upon which everything else depends and through which everything else can be controlled, free and open at all times. Otherwise, we are risking compromises, not just of a particular feature or other (which can be sandboxed anyway), but of everything: all privacy, security, and integrity. Platforms are too important not to be made opened to audits and peer review.
If we had no alternatives to closed platforms, fine, we’ll use what we have (while we wait for the open alternatives to mature), but with (comparable) alternatives within reach (and actually less expensive to own and operate), I find no excuse to stay proprietary.
http://windows7sins.org/
If it has a Microsoft trademark, it has a lock in somewhere. Simple but true. The primary purpose of Microsoft products is to sell other Microsoft products.
Using Microsoft provided solutions is like buying an all in one Hifi system. Great until one bit breaks.
I prefer the hifi separates approach myself. Buy what you need when you need, and upgrade as you can afford or desire. As my 20 year old, but in perfect working order CD player can testify..
Jose X, John: Thanks for your views. The VAR Guy strives to keep an open mind and he’s very curious to see where Microsoft takes Windows Azure. And the folks at VMware continue to enjoy momentum. But most of the buzz at Red Hat Summit echoes the comments you shared.
There’s little danger of Azure gaining any meaingful traction. Due to Windows licensing it will always be significantly more expensive than the competition, and if they make it cheaper or make the licensing free then they risk harming license revenue for Windows and other software they might host. It’s just fundamentally as odds with Microsoft’s core revenue generators.