Another take on Red Hat acquiring eNovance

My colleague Natalie Gagliordi authored a lovely article on Red Hat's acquisition of eNovance (see Red Hat to acquire OpenStack integrator eNovance for a review of the details of the announcement.) This acquisition, along with recent moves from other players, changes the market dynamics. Some suppliers will get a boost from this announcement. Others will lose ground.

Impact on OpenStack players

Here's a quick take on what's changed in the market:

• Red Hat — the company continues to demonstrate that OpenStack is an important part of an open source platform. It has updated its operating systems and virtual machine software to better support and integrate into the OpenStack environment. Adding eNovance's "Software Factory" and eNovance's clear expertise in OpenStack to its portfolio can only serve to elevate Red Hat's position in the market.
• HP, IBM, Dell and other systems suppliers — these players are offering OpenStack based products and services that are based upon their own hardware platforms. In the past, organizations that have standardized on their products, would come directly to them for help in implementing a private OpenStack-based cloud. Now, it is likely that the portion of their customer base that has also standardized on Red Hat software will go to Red Hat for integration and optimization services.
• Piston Cloud and other stand alone suppliers of OpenStack distributions are likely to face pressure to differentiate their offerings from Red Hat, HP, IBM, Dell and other major hardware, software and services companies. Some potential customers will seek out the "one stop shopping" offered by those players and bypass services companies.
• RackSpace and other cloud services providers will now face competition from yet another source. Companies that plan to implement an on- and off-premise hybrid cloud implementation may not come to them first. If they are looking for a one stop shopping experience, Red Hat, HP, IBM, Dell and the like just might be their first stop.
• Marantis  and other pure-play services companies, as with the OpenStack distribution companies,  are likely to face even more pressure to differentiate their offerings from Red Hat, HP, IBM, Dell and other major hardware, software and services companies. Some potential customers will seek out the "one stop shopping" offered by those players and bypass services companies. Mirantis points out that it is the last independent player in this segment of the market. It believes that companies seeking a vendor neutral partner will continue to come to them.

The OpenStack market is clearly vibrant and alive. Many organizations have selected this cloud platform and more will continue to make that choice. There are other choices, however. Organizations may still select AWS/Eucalyptus, VMware vCloud or Microsoft Azure rather than an OpenStack approach.

 Note: Updated with new information from Piston Cloud and Mirantis