OpenStack and CloudStack driving change

BOSTON, USA: VMware's dominant share of the cloud platform market among top Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers is eroding mainly as a result of gains by open source OpenStack and CloudStack platforms.

According to Strategy Analytics Business Cloud Strategies (BCS) service report, "Business Cloud Platforms Powering Top IaaS Service Providers: Open Source Software Alternatives are Driving Change," VMware powers one-third of all services revenue from the top IaaS cloud providers with $100+M in revenue as of 2012, more than any other platform including Amazon Web Services (AWS).

However, VMware's share has been trending downward over the past several years as cloud service providers consider open source and commercial alternatives from Microsoft, OnApp, 8x8 and others when choosing to buy rather than build their own cloud platforms.

Mark Levitt, director of Business Cloud Strategies research at Strategy Analytics, said: "Flexibility and agility are critical elements of cloud computing not only for customers but for service providers as well."

"With cloud market opportunities still looking hazy regarding what services to offer and how significant public and private cloud solutions will be for their businesses, cloud service providers are looking to choose the cloud platform that will keep their options open and deliver the biggest return on investments," said Levitt.

"Open source software platforms are attractive to service providers that appreciate their lower upfront costs and the opportunity to benefit and contribute as members of a community committed to the vision of open standards-based, interoperable cloud services," said Andrew Brown, executive director of Enterprise Research at Strategy Analytics.