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Ex VMware cloud exec to launch OpenStack-flavored Cloud Foundry PaaS

Derek Collison, former CTO and Chief Software Architect of VMware's Cloud Applications Platforms, and lead developer of the VMware initiated open Cloud Foundry PaaS, plans to launch his own commercial version of Cloud Foundry in the next six months.

Written by Paula Rooney, Contributor April 3, 2012 at 5:00 p.m. PT

NOTE TO READERS: This post has been updated since it first posted Wednesday morning.

There's another open source Cloud Foundry Platform-As-A-Service in the works with an OpenStack flavor, sources say.

Derek Collison, former CTO and Chief Software Architect of VMware's Cloud Applications Platforms, and lead developer of Cloud Foundry, plans to launch his own commercial version of Cloud Foundry.

"He's doing a commercial version of Cloud Foundry outside of VMware," said one source in the know, adding that it will have a strong OpenStack flavor. "It's just at the tipping point of OpenStack."

Sources is the know say the former Google exec -- who was employed by VMware from 2009 through February of 2012 -- is expected to come out with something in the next six months.

"Can't say too much too much yet, but will be able to soon," Collison said in an email to this blogger.

It's not clear if Collison will have much to say about the commercial venture at the OpenStack Conference next week. The "Essex" release of OpenStack was released today.

Cloud Foundry is an Open Platform-As-A-Service project initiated by VMware last year. It is an open source project and is available through a variety of private cloud distributions and public cloud instances, including CloudFoundry.com, according to the Cloud Foundry web site.

ActiveState (Python), AppFog (PHP) and Joyent Node.JS) are the top community leads on the project. Collison currently serves as an advisor to AppFog.

Collison's plans -- as well as those of Red Hat and IBM, both new OpenStack supporters, demonstrate that OpenStack is well ahead of Citrix's Cloud Stack , which was donated to the Apache Foundation earlier this week, sources said.

"Cloud Foundry has the same flavor and philosophy of OpenStack," said Josh McKenty, the original architect behind OpenStack and former NASA chief technical architect Josh McKenty, whose Piston Cloud Computing company aims to become the Red Hat of Cloud Computing.

The incorporation of OpenStack in the latest rev of Red Hat sponsored Fedora and Red Hat's acquisition of Glusters last year indicate the direction of the leading Linux company, one source said, adding that IBM has been quietly contributing code to the OpenStack project.

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Ex VMware cloud exec to launch OpenStack-flavored Cloud Foundry PaaS

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