Cloud Foundry is the LAMP Stack of Cloud Computing

Just as the LAMP stack provided a core foundation next gen for web applications, Cloud Foundry is providing a core foundation for next gen cloud platforms.

Cloud Foundry announced today that two new startups are building their clouds based on Cloud Foundry.

Cloud Foundry is proving itself to be truly the foundry for creating entirely new cloud offerings:

• ActiveState is building a cloud for Python and Django and contributing code to support Python back to the Cloud Foundry open source project.
• Appfog is building a cloud for PHP developers and contributing code to support PHP back to the Cloud Foundry open source project

The beauty of this is that innovative startups are able to start with a scalable cloud "stack" that gives them a multi-language PaaS without locking them into a particular cloud provider.

So for example, Appfog gets to use Cloud Foundry's best in class PaaS services and then target deployment to Amazon's EC2 and services like S3. Appfog CEO Lucas Carlson blogged here about how standing on the shoulders of cloud computing giants will allow Appfog to win in the cloud by providing the most compelling user experience.

Expect to see the pace of innovation accelerate dramatically going forward!

DevOps and PaaS - Friend or Foe?

DevOps, which I will arbitrarily define here as "automating SysAdmin tasks to streamline application lifecycle management," raises important questions about the cloud.

• Developers may ask: "if I have a self-service portal for deploying applications (aka PaaS), do I need SysAdmins at all?"
• SysAdmins may ask: "isn't PaaS just a monstrous black box that prevents me from provisioning the specific services we need to deploy real-world apps?"
• VMware asks: "what if you could get a PaaS that wasn't black box, enabling developers to deploy apps easily while still giving SysAdmins the ability to provision any services they needed (aka Cloud Foundry)?

I had a good conversation recently with John Willis of DTO Solutions (twitter feed here) in which he waxed eloquent on how DevOps and Cloud Foundry can live together in harmony. Here were the key points I took away:

• SysAdmins distrust the black box nature of PaaS: Typical sysadmin thinks that they can get to 75% of PaaS functionality with DevOps tools like Chef without giving up any systems architecture flexibility. In contrast, PaaS solutions like Heroku provide developers an easy to use PaaS but gives SysAdmins zero ability to add services that Heroku doesn't support.
• Cloud Foundry solves the SysAdmin aversion to cloud vapor: CloudFoundry runs anywhere, incuding on your laptop. Cloud Foundry's service container concept is particularly strong, kind of an appliance on steroids.

There is a strong natural between DevOps and PaaS. Products like Chef and Puppet are strongest for installing and configuring the OS and middleware stack. PaaS solutions like Cloud Foundry excel it deploying application architectures.

The holy grail is to use Chef or Puppet provisioning Cloud Foundry services that can then be easily consumed by developers. DTO Solutions is putting on events to show SysAdmins how to make this happen.

You can also register for the a DevOps HackDay featuring CloudFoundry. The first one is being put on at VMware, September 8, 2011.