Why open source will rule the data center

Feb 13, 2014, by admin

Three commonly occurring conditions ensure that open source software will steadily widen its data center footprint.

Open source as the future of IT
Open is playing an increasingly vital role in IT infrastructure. The current, dominant position of open source in server-side computing is well understood, and networking is now edging its way toward open source with the OpenDaylight movement. But is open source a natural evolutionary path for all IT disciplines, or do certain characteristics make some areas more attractive for open source than others?

When we think about networking as an industry, for example, we tend to compare its progress to the evolutionary track taken by the compute world. The assumption is that the networking industry will unfold in much the same way that the server industry did, marching past similar milestones. But this view of the world assumes that evolution follows a two-dimensional track, and industries are either parked somewhere along the continuum or they’re moving toward a predetermined end.

But what if evolution doesn’t follow some set schedule or even a singular path? If we assume that technological evolution is not predetermined, then what conditions drive an industry toward open source?

To address these questions, let’s start by examining the three major drivers for broad open source adoption:

Single platform
When lots of applications run on a single platform, that platform is primed for open source. For most platform plays, value and differentiation are not in the platform, but rather reside in what runs on top of the platform. It makes sense that, to the extent possible, vendors developing on a platform should leverage a common body of work. Re-creating foundational elements not unique is duplicative work that ultimately costs the end-user. Additionally, a common platform helps ensure that all applications on top of the platform can run in what ends up looking like a fairly ubiquitous execution environment.

Single point of control
When a single point of control for a large number of infrastructure elements exists, that point of control lends itself well to open source. The value in a point of control lies either in managing very specific workflows (as with most single-vendor management platforms) or in broadly orchestrating workflows across disparate elements in heterogeneous environments (as with SDN controllers). The former tends toward tightly integrated management/execution solutions, while the latter provides a fertile breeding ground for open source.

Nascent technology
Innovation is always important, but in a technology’s formative stages, that innovation may not be focused in a particular direction. When the outcome is uncertain, the number of potential paths approaches infinity. During these times, the best thing for nascent technology is unbridled support. Open source allows the widest aperture for new ideas to come into the space, which makes it ideally suited for nascent technology spaces where iterative experimentation is necessary.

Driving the future
With these drivers in mind, it’s relatively straightforward to see why open source plays a large role in certain areas of IT. On the server side, the proliferation of applications and the desire for those applications to be portable was enough to ensure the emergence of an open source compute platform like Linux. Once performance was good enough, differentiation was always going to move to the applications, which made unique platform capabilities unnecessary for the lion’s share of apps. Where performance or specialty capabilities remain important, there is still a small market for special operating environments.