
HP Makes $1 Billion Bet on Open Cloud - deepblueocean
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/07/h-p-makes-1-billion-bet-on-open-cloud
======
jxf
Here's a fun test I like to do with people who want me to get started with
OpenStack, the system that HP is backing:

Starting from the home page ([http://openstack.org](http://openstack.org)),
try to download something that will let you run a test stack on your local
machine, and run it. Time how long this takes.

For me, it took over 50 clicks, searches, etc. and two hours of time before I
figured out how to get the stack up and running. It was one of the most
frustrating technology experiences I've had in recent memory. The website is a
labyrinthine, confusing morass of marketing gobbledygook that I found
difficult to get important details from, at least for developers as an
audience.

I think OpenStack has a long way to go in terms of technical usability before
I'd consider trying it out again. That was months ago (August 2013), so maybe
things have improved, but I haven't worked up the courage to try again just
yet.

P.S. OpenStack devs: I'd be happy to have a conversation about it! I would
love to be told that my experience was anomalous and get a reason to give it
another shot.

~~~
cones688
> so maybe things have improved

4 Clicks takes you to [http://devstack.org/](http://devstack.org/) and
installs with 2 commands... git clone [https://github.com/openstack-
dev/devstack.git](https://github.com/openstack-dev/devstack.git) then cd
devstack && ./stack.sh

~~~
alrs
As someone who spent 18 months of his life deploying Openstack at scale, I'm
confident in pointing out that devstack is, like most of Openstack, half-
broken.

~~~
AndyNemmity
Would love to hear more about this. Do you have any blogs or details on your
experience?

------
parasubvert
OpenStack 2014 somehow reminds me a lot of OMG/CORBA 1993. It's interesting to
watch the industry repeat itself.

Checklist:

\- Anybody but "x" club, where X is the market leader. Openstack has
vascillated between VMware and AWS here, CORBA had Microsoft.

\- Large investments advertised as a penis swinging contest between HP, IBM,
and others

\- Chasing aging technology architecture as a panacea instead of building the
next generation.

CORBA was chasing distributed objects, but the Web and REST was what really
was going to matter. Today the big guys are chasing the IaaS model when we
have a new generation of platform and application clouds (Mesos, YARN, CoreOS,
Docker, CF, Asgard) growing out there.

The vendors will of course try to recoup their investment through reference
architectures and "best practices" that tell customers they should have a
multi-layer SaaS or PaaS running on an IaaS, even though lightweight
alternatives like CoreOS will chug along doing nothing of the sort.

This is similar to how CORBA's IIOP was promoted to be the way to do "real
work" with C++ or Enterprise JavaBeans in your middle tier, but this "Web"
HTTP thing can be relegated to the front tier. I know fixed income systems
around 1999 that literally wouldn't use HTTP for their blotter updates, with
the lead devs insisting such events needed to be pushed over IIOP even though
the front end was an IE control in a VBX. (this was shortly before TIBCO had
effectively seized the market data industry)

\- persistent flame wars about governance and architecture of said standard on
the social media of the day

\- Vendor adoption drastically outpacing customer adoption , developing a
"buying customers" effect

This is not to say OpenStack is bad. There is value, potentially a lot of
value, as there was with CORBA. That's all case-by-case. Just saying that
vendor love fests rarely indicate a true revolution and most often are just an
orchestrated marketing game by the current losers.

~~~
dekhn
I'm a cloud architect (a person who assembles cloud computing systems from
components). I haven't used OpenStack; I've looked at it and while the concept
is fine, the implementation is pretty underwhelming. Corps just want it
because if widely adopted, it will reduce their cost and increase their profit
margins.

Don't forget the SOAP era; it also resembles CORBA. There was a whole region
of time (~2002-2005) where Microsoft and IBM jumped on SOAP. They promoted the
hell out of their stacks, and then, after everybody realized SOAP was a turd,
put the projects in deprecated mode.

[http://www.ianfoster.org/wordpress/wp-
content/uploads/2014/0...](http://www.ianfoster.org/wordpress/wp-
content/uploads/2014/01/History-of-the-Grid-numbered.pdf) (page 23).

The next step in evolution was JSON payloads over HTTP, with methods defined
using REST. This model has more or less survived for 10 years now, and is a
community-created (rather than top-down-imposed by a corporation) system that
has lots of experience under its belt. I expect only marginal changes at this
point: move towards a more compact encoding (like BSON) and a bit more
standardization on where the RPC method is defined. I expect REST itself,
being so hard to understand, will only be used by people who really insist on
getting their API surfaces really RESTy.

~~~
Daviey
"concept is fine, the implementation is pretty underwhelming", care to expand?

I find it odd that a self-declared cloud architect hasn't used what is
_easily_ the largest growing IAAS project, free or commercial.

~~~
dekhn
I have access to other clouds which provide the openstack functionality,
without me having to adopt openstack.

I don't think we have accurate visibiliy into EC2 to compare its rate of
growth compared to OpenStack.

OpenStack isn't IaaS. It's a PaaS middleware that abstracts the underlying
IaaS.

------
_nullandnull_
[http://www.theonion.com/video/hp-on-that-cloud-thing-that-
ev...](http://www.theonion.com/video/hp-on-that-cloud-thing-that-everyone-
else-is-talki,28789/)

~~~
jacobheller
Was just going to post this :)

~~~
andybak
I enjoyed that. Almost as terrifyingly accurate as this:
[http://www.theonion.com/video/sony-releases-new-stupid-
piece...](http://www.theonion.com/video/sony-releases-new-stupid-piece-of-
shit-that-doesnt,14309/)

------
darksim905
So I recently saw a keynote by someone on OpenStack at LOPSA-East and as a
System Administrator it kind of scares me. I'm finally starting to understand
the meaning, reasoning behind & the fervor behind DevOps & why some
organizations have such a need for better DevOps in their organization.

At the same time I also see Dev taking more care of Ops & cutting us
(Sysadmins) out entirely. How do I take advantage of this or get ahead of this
curve? I know there will always be a niche for small time System
Administrators who administer small offices, primarily use Windows, etc. but
after that ... we're done for.

~~~
jively
Upskilling into some lightweight dev or source management (e.g. release
management) is always an option - DevOps can come down on the Dev or Ops side,
depending on your lineage, ultimately it's a more holistic view of the
application lifecycle.

Getting your head around how AWS, GAE and Docker deployments work and
combining that with traditional sysadmin knowledge should do you in good
stead.

------
justincormack
So HP will spend $1bn over two years on cloud while Google is spending twice
that a quarter and Amazon and Microsoft spend that a quarter on capex mainly
on cloud. It is not clear they are a serious player. Rack space has spent more
than that already.

~~~
viraptor
Keep in mind they (rax, Amazon) are already running multiple deployments
across continents. It's quite easy to spend a lot of money just to keep that
service going.

~~~
wmf
Capex measures expansion, so even though they're starting from a small base,
HP is still growing their cloud slower than Amazon or Google.

------
mark_l_watson
A private cloud seems like a good choice for larger organizations. They still
have some admin and/or devops overhead that they would not have using AWS,
Compute Cloud, Azure, etc. But, they might save a lot of money by providing
developers with Heroku-like platform services but running on their own more
cost effective hardware.

For startups with a few people, private clouds might not be a good ideas. Any
supporting cases that show the opposite?

I would be interested to see co-ops where individuals and small companies join
together to build and operate private clouds for the benefit of their co-op
members.

------
edkennedy
I think this article misunderstands HP's definition of service provider. From
what I understand HP considers service providers to be SAAS, IAAS, Hosting,
and Managed Service Providers, not only telecommunications and ISP. I'm
working for a VAR that has made this definition of service provider into a
vertical and we have seen massive growth in this space. A lot of companies are
making this distinction now, after seeing their existing hardware sales to SMB
drying up as services shift to the cloud.

------
erdle
Attention companies going public in the near future: this is how you raise
your stock price

And why do you do this? Because you're paid in stock and actual internal
projects are not going to "wow" analysts. When in doubt spend money on what's
popular.

------
leorocky
This news has killed Rackspace stock, RAX is down tremendously for the last
week (although up today). Quarterly earnings come out next quarter, and those
have been bad every first quarter so far if memory serves me. So probably not
going to trend up. I don't own any rackspace stock and I'm not making
predictions anyone should bet on. I'm just complaining because Rackspace has
really good products and it's getting pummeled. Down more than 60ish% since
its height a year or so ago.

In related news, rax being cheaper make it a bargain for an acquisition, P/E
is around 40 now.

------
carl689
Anyone else here from HN at the open stack summit in Atlanta?

~~~
alrs
I went to the three before HK.

Don't trust anything you hear from on stage, especially the enterprise
"success stories." These are largely coming from an alternate universe.

The engineering planning sessions are excellent.

------
nashadelic
Folks, I'm from Pakistan and even our local news reported on this three days
before hacker news. What gives?

