據Joshua McKenty，他曾在NASA的Nebula云工程變成OpenStack的基礎之前領導過該工程，說云是計算機領域的下一個長期性革命。
第一次革命是大型機，然后是電腦，接著是互聯網，而現在是云。
這是一個重大的宣言，也給了許多公司足夠的理由，從思杰公司(CTXS)到Rackspace (RAX)，到VMWare (VMW)，再到紅帽(RHT)，推出“云操作系統”并成為這個熱點，新型計算平臺中的“微軟”。
據McKenty所說，問題在于，云不是一臺電腦。它甚至不是互聯網。它要復雜得多，更像20世紀60年代中期幾乎使得IBM走向滅亡的大型機技術。
360系統問題教會了人們一些東西，Frederick Brooks，他參與了該項目，后來基于這些撰寫了經典著作《人月神話》，也就是大問題不會對蠻力作出回應。讓一個工程師加入到企業項目實際上會減慢進度，因為每個新員工在提供生產力之前都必須進行培訓和監督。
McKenty說，該解決方案就是產生了Linux的開源過程。它耗費了Linux數十年時間來獲取數據中心的主導地位，由于許多不同的團隊從許多不同方向各個擊破問題，每個團隊的貢獻最終構成了一個更大的整體，所以它起作用了。那也是為什么McKenty基于pentOS，從他在OpenStack這個開源項目上的Piston云啟動并且沒有要求它要是云問題的解決方案。
阻礙云的問題是任何互聯網用戶都很熟悉的問題。提供ID，獲得認證，政策管理。使得這些事情變得無關緊要，自動化，天衣無縫是讓企業構建他們會把自己堵上的云的先決條件。Nebula被轉移到OpenStack上就是在尋找這些問題的答案，因為政府就是那種會完全利用完整云產品的企業。
對于投資者來說這意味著什么呢？這意味著，在短期內，諸如亞馬遜(AMZN),谷歌(GOOG),和Rackspace此類的公有云公司就是可以押注的地方?；诔杀緛硌鹤?mdash;成本效益最高的云會勝出。
這也意味著諸如Oracle (ORCL), SAP (SAP)和IBM (IBM)這樣的企業軟件公司有時間進行調整，惠普 (HPQ)和戴爾(DELL)也是如此。在這里投注，基于對開源工程的承諾，他說。
McKenty的結論是，盡管目前所有的那些關于云的炒作，這并不是1994年，那年Web破繭而出。這更像1989年，那時UUNet之類的公司定義了連接，CompuServe定義了服務，并且美國在線之類的東西被認為是最先進的。沒有什么真正在互聯網革命中存活下來了，而且預先對其中任何東西投注你都會一無所獲。
McKenty認為當解決方案可用時，比起任何專有的筒倉（或半專有供應商）他們更像來自于OpenStack的開源過程，那時真正的暴雨才開始。
現在已經不是以前了。
According to Joshua McKenty, who helped lead NASA's Nebula cloud project before it became the basis of OpenStack, cloud is the next secular change in computing.
First came mainframes, then PCs, then Internet, and now cloud.
That's a big claim, and reason enough for lots of companies, from Citrix (CTXS) to Rackspace (RAX) to VMWare (VMW) to Red Hat (RHT) , to launch a "cloud OS" and become the Microsoft of this hot new computing platform.
Trouble is, says McKenty, a cloud isn't a PC. It isn't even the Internet. It's something much more complex, more like the mainframe technology that nearly destroyed IBM in the mid-1960s.
What the System 360 problem taught people like Frederick Brooks, who worked on the project and later wrote his classic The Mythical Man-Month based upon it, is that big problems don't respond to brute force. Adding engineers to a corporate project can actually slow progress, as each new employee must be trained and supervised before delivering productivity.
The solution, says McKenty, is the open source process that produced Linux. It took Linux decades to achieve data center dominance, and it worked because many different teams came at problems from many different directions, each contributing a little to the larger whole. That's why McKenty based pentOS, from his Piston Cloud start-up, on OpenStack, an open source project, and makes no claims of it being "the" solution to the cloud problem.
The problems holding back cloud are some any Internet user is familiar with. Proving your identity.Gaining authentication.Policy management. Making these things painless, automated and seamless are preconditions to major enterprises building clouds they will bet their companies on. It was in search of answers to those problems that Nebula was moved to OpenStack, because governments are enterprises that can take full advantage of a complete cloud solution.
What does this mean for investors? It means that, in the near term, public cloud companies like Amazon (AMZN), Google (GOOG), and Rackspace are the place to play. Place your bets here based on costs - the most efficient cloud wins.
It also means that enterprise software companies like Oracle (ORCL), SAP (SAP) and IBM (IBM) have time to adjust, as do HP (HPQ) and Dell (DELL). Place your bets here based on a real commitment to the open source process, he says.
Despite all the current hype concerning cloud, McKenty concludes, this isn't 1994, the year the Web was spun. This is more like 1989, when companies like UUNet defined connectivity, when CompuServe defined services, and when things like America Online were considered leading-edge. None really survived the Internet revolution, and betting on any of them beforehand would have guaranteed you nothing.
When the solutions are available, and McKenty thinks they're more likely to come from the open source process of OpenStack than the silo of any proprietary (or semi-proprietary vendor) then the real cloudburst can start.
Not before.
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