PayPal’s Comments About OpenStack Stirs Controversy
PayPal recently said that much of its website was built using the private cloud platform OpenStack. The news was released on a PayPal blog and the entry didn’t receive much attention at first. In the article, PayPal mentions that its migration to private cloud has worked out splendidly. In a report by CRN, a PayPal VP confirms that PayPal has, “Converted nearly 100 percent of our traffic serving web/API applications and mid-tier services at PayPal to run on our internal private cloud, based on OpenStack.”
So PayPal uses OpenStack; A lot of organizations are starting to use OpenStack, where’s the controversy?
Most of the time, news such as this passes without much fan fair. However, Ben Kepes, a cloud contributor at Forbes, recently wrote an article titled Good Bye VMware, Hello OpenStack. PayPal Axes Virtualization Giant.
This begs the question, “Did PayPal really give VMWare the ax?” Matthew Lodge, a Senior VP at VMWare, tweeted in response, “Hey @benkepes the PayPal blog you cite doesn’t mention VMware at all. Where do you get the info that they are dumping VMW?”
CRN says that it reached out to PayPal for clarification but received none. CloudWedge has also emailed PayPal to get clarification on these series of blog posts.
It is important to note that VMWare sells its own version of OpenStack. It’s unclear as to whether or not this version of OpenStack is what PayPal has implemented as its private cloud. It could also be of interest that this is not the first “War of Words” that VMWare has found itself apart of.
When VMWare’s first announced that its new vSphere package would contain OpenStack, Red Hat General Manager Bryan Che wrote a lengthy article describing his problems with VMWare’s take on OpenStack.
It seems as if the PayPal blog article has only raised more questions than it has provided answers.
