Analyst Jeff Kaplan, managing director, THINKstrategies, says Piston Cloud is intriguing because it is the first commercial offering of the OpenStack standard. "It will be interesting to see if Piston Cloud can generate the same broad-based following and tremendous financial success in the cloud OS market that RedHat has achieved in the open source world.”
OpenStack has gained attention and support from a number of high-profile technology players, including Cisco Systems.
Piston is joining a crowded field with a host of proprietary and non-proprietary cloud standards and offerings. In August, the Open Cloud Initiative published the Open Cloud Principles document. In June, the Open Data Center Alliance released a set of proposed standards for cloud providers, and the Cloud Standards Customer Council announced a project to create a Practical Guide to Cloud Computing.
Marko writes that Piston’s total cost of ownership "is likely to significantly undercut VMware, Citrix or even Microsoft Hyper-V," with estimates of about $800 per system for a minimally configured Piston Cloud-powered cloud, including one year of 24/7 support.
Among his caveats, Marko notes that there is probably not enough in the current version of Piston Cloud to sway organizations that are already fully invested in VMware’s cloud approach to the competing OpenStack camp. But for organizations that have yet to commit to an enterprise private cloud strategy (including 36% of respondents to InformationWeek’s Data Center Convergence survey), Marko writes, there’s "a lot to like in Piston Cloud."
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