Coté Memo #035 - Is Docker a threat to OpenStack, NPC in servers, OCP too expensive?, etc.

Sep 10, 2014

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Tech & Work World

Quick Hits

September 09, 2014 at 07:27AM - fadingcity
Former Red Hat CTO drops into cloudy veep spot at Google - the dude was there a long, long time. As a side note, I like that Google favors the word "Work" over "Enterprise" in branding. That's good framing. See also CRN's coverage.
Ask Ars: When should I plan to upgrade my iPhone? - if you have a iPhone 5 of below.
Uptick in Business Demand for Smartphones, Tablets & PCs - for 451 clients, fresh survey data from 451' ChangeWave: "25% say their company plans on buying tablets next quarter, down 1-pt from May" with Apple far, far in the lead.
Bessemer’s Commandments for Developer-Focused Businesses - these are obviously targeted at startups in growth mode who are looking to build valuation not (just) profit, but, hey, still good.
Weave project knits together networks for Docker containers - I don't know what this is yet, but it's probably interesting.
Dell PowerEdge 13g Servers with NFC - I talked a lot with Mark while I was at Dell about this. Walk up to a server and touch your phone to it to configure it.
How millennials spend - long-term, it's interesting to understand the mindset of your buyers. I get the feeling "genuine" will be an important theme and "aesthetic," if you will, over the next ten years. Cf. "Applefornia."
Open Compute Hardware Not Cheap Enough for Enterprises - all it takes is a few "VARs" to fix that problem. Someone like CDW or Ingram could just slap a middleman in there. I mean, that's kindasorta what server companies do already (OK, not really).
-Internet of Things: Major players agree on goals, but little else - yeah, it's early.
27 things no-one tells new analysts - this is a pretty good list, granted oriented around the journalist-cum-analyst mindset which is basically to publish. It's what we do at 451 and where Nick is from. I think this is good advice for those people who want to be like emerging web-native analysts and other unknowing children of RedMonk like stratechery, asymco, etc.

Is Docker a threat to OpenStack?

We get questions like this a lot. Here's the swag du jour:

I think they're complimentary. OpenStack is more about orchestrating and manage large clouds, where-as Docker alone is at the single node level. Docker should be looked at as two things: (a.) more efficient virtualization, but that likely works on less workloads than virtualization (at the moment), and, (b.) a developer-friendly way to package up applications for deployment into cloud and cloud-like environments (as well as non-cloud infrastructure).

Docker is a threat to virtualization, primarily. Systems like Mesosphere, CoreOS, and Kubernetes (I don't understand it well enough, but I think it fits here) that use (or could use) things like Docker are more a threat to OpenStack. Why? Developers building applications could find the stripped down management and orchestration in those systems more than good enough and not go in for the "bigger plate of hassle" that OpenStack brings. The question becomes: is OpenStack "over" (managing how these things are used) those, or "under" (managed by and used a fungible resource) them?

As with all "threats" to OpenStack, the key question is: can these alternatives get into a production ready, get up and running in less than a day state before OpenStack does? I.e.: "OpenStack is hard, our stuff is easy."

Fun & IRL

RE/Search - in the pre-web days, I loved these books. I don't think I ever bought one, but I always sought them at at Half-Priced Books and thumbed through them. Now of course, we have the web.