It’s fascinating being a close observer of the OpenStack ecosystem. To be honest, the machinations and posturing among the different players feels almost like a John Le Carre novel with friends, enemies and seemingly dozens of shades in between.

Two companies that epitomized this are Mirantis and Red Hat. Red Hat, the 800-pound gorilla in the open source world, has had long-term success commercializing various open-source projects, initially Linux, of course, but a host of others since.

For its part, Mirantis is a much newer player and was borne after the advent of OpenStack. Mirantis is essentially trying to “out Red Hat Red Hat.” The two were, back in distant memory, close partners, with Red Hat investing in Mirantis and talking of potential acquisition plans. Red Hat went in a different direction, however, acquiring competing OpenStack service provider eNovance and embarking on a war of words with the upstart. In fairness, I have to point out that the war of words between the two has been mutual, with Mirantis doing its part to fuel the flames.

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Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

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