OpenStack supporters downplay Citrix defection

03.04.2012

McKenty sees the strength of the OpenStack community as a major differentiating feature between the two projects. "OpenStack is very much a community-driven project; it's very difficult for any one company to drive it. OpenStack will become what the 150 companies want it to be," he says. "Citrix has the only major contributor to CloudStack, so they will still be the large, influential player." He called CloudStack "a community of one company."

Citrix officials would disagree. During a launch press conference, officials displayed a slide of more than two dozen companies that have given Citrix initial support, including Juniper Networks, NetApp, RightScale, Brocade, Alcatel-Lucent, Engine Yard, Zenoss, British Telecom, Tata, Go Daddy and Softlayer.

Network World staff writer Brandon Butler covers cloud computing and social media. He can be reached at BButler@nww.com and found on Twitter at @BButlerNWW.