The Critical Choice for OpenStack: AWS API or Not?
In my previous blog, I mentioned the need for common abstractions and APIs to decouple application run-time environment from the Cloud service provider for high portability.
This resonates with the great debate as to whether OpenStack should build and maintain its own set of differentiated APIs or leverage the Amazon Web Services (AWS) API. I remarked that OpenStack Board of Director leader Randy Bias is taking an active stance: He contends that creating its own API will harm the OpenStack community. Moreover, doing so will completely repudiate the original mission of OpenStack—to produce a ubiquitous open source cloud computing platform for both public and private clouds.
“I’ve made no secret of my belief that this choice will harm OpenStack, and perhaps already has,” Bias wrote in a letter to the OpenStack community. “Now, the issue has become urgent, and I hope to convince you to join me in advocating that OpenStack immediately and deliberately embrace the APIs and features of established public clouds.”
The debate certainly heated up this summer and shows no sign of slowing down as selecting the API of a vendor has possible drawbacks (such as potential vendor lock-in) while creating a different API has its own setbacks. When it comes to the OpenStack community, having a different API can be painful for the users developing and testing in AWS but deploying in OpenStack-based private cloud for production or mixing private cloud and AWS-based cloud solutions. Moreover, with AWS standing firmly as the de-facto standard that is largely adopted by the developer community, OpenStack can’t afford to lose in the API world.
It seems that Bias is not alone in his sentiment as Eucalyptus CEO Mårten Mickos argued just last month that shying away from the AWS API could come back to “haunt” OpenStack. That is because for workloads to be able to move between clouds and for hybrid clouds to happen, APIs must be compatible. Since OpenStack is making a play for the hybrid cloud market it will be challenging to have compatibility issues.
There is no disputing the fact that AWS is dominating the public cloud arena. In fact, Macquarie Capital analysts contend that by the end of 2013, AWS is expected to surpass $3.8 billion in revenue and could be worth $19 billion to $30 billion if it were a standalone company. According to Bias, by embracing AWS and its API, OpenStack can emerge as the premiere choice for enterprises and SaaS providers who are searching for an ecosystem approach to public cloud—one in which their applications can move to the infrastructure best suited to the job at the time.
Choosing a public cloud compatibility strategy is of the utmost importance for the OpenStack community many argue as it will position the project to achieve dominance in both the private and hybrid cloud markets.
“Amazon and Google are our friends because they are spreading awareness and adoption of cloud computing,” Bias concludes. “They are ‘making the pie bigger’ for us all. Together, they are creating a rich and vibrant public cloud ecosystem, and OpenStack can connect to it with a rich and vibrant private cloud ecosystem.”
AWS is certainly not the best API for the Cloud as C was not the best programming language for application or the socket API the best API for interacting with a network. But the Cloud disruption started with AWS and lot of modern applications and tools heavily rely on it now. Any new Cloud API or concept will always be compared and referred to something that has previously emerged in AWS such as the auto-scaling group, the cloudformation, the elastic load balancer. The Cloud culture is already deeply tinted by AWS. This is a fact and we should innovate from here, not reinventing the first wheel.