Should cloud computing be open-source?

Open source software has been on the rise during the economic downturn, because of its agility, flexibility and customization. Now, we arrived at the point when openness is being accepted for cloud computing. Open source was born in an effort to make technology more collaborative, affordable and available to everyone.

I believe that soon the cloud space will embrace open-source software. OpenStack is a successful project founded by NASA and Rackspace. OpenStack is a cloud operating system that controls large pools of compute, storage, and networking resources throughout a datacenter, all managed through a dashboard that gives administrators control while empowering their users to provision resources through a web interface. This would allow anyone to deliver cloud computing services to others.

Open source has several key dimensions that contribute to its success:

• Licenses that permit and encourage redistribution, modification, and even forking;
• An architecture that enables programs to be used as components wherever possible, and extended rather than replaced to provide new functionality;
• Low barriers for new users to try the software;
• Low barriers for developers to build new applications and share them with the world.

Now let’s see some of the things to consider when talking about open source being the future of cloud computing:

1.     Personal Clouds will replace Personal Computers

Personal computers will be replaced by personal clouds, as people already started to store their images, videos and documents online. The main reasons for this are that people want their documents to be secure and to have them backed up.  Information/data stored on personal clouds make it available anytime, anywhere, so people only need an Internet connection and a computing device to access all the documents.

2.     Stability, Scalability and Reliability of Open-Source Software

Open-source technologies are preferred because of their stability, scalability and reliability. These technologies are highly customizable, secure, reliable and accountable. When using open-source, the development and support of software can be maintained by developers world wide.

 Open-source collaboration tools will be used in the near future by corporations, service providers, VARS, SMBs, researchers and global data centers, which are looking to deploy large-scale cloud deployments for private or public clouds leveraging the support and technology of a global open source community.

Photo source: https://www.sxc.hu/photo/1260787