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Missing in action: The OpenStackers lost from Gartner's quadrant

I see no ships ... or boxen, come to that

The more I look at Gartner's recent Magic Quadrant for x86 server virtualization infrastructure, the more confused I get.

The analyst's take on Huawei's relevance to virtualization is particularly puzzling. Not so much because I disagree with Huawei's inclusion, but because many of the organizations left out are even more important.

If you read the Magic Quadrant itself, Gartner lists their inclusion criteria.

Vendors that were eligible for inclusion in this Magic Quadrant met the following criteria:

  • It must provide x86-server-based solutions to virtualize applications from OSs, or OSs from x86 server hardware, using either hypervisors or container technology.
  • It must provide basic administrative tools for:
    • Administrative management frameworks/suites for hypervisors/containers
    • Embedded virtualization management technology (such as live migration)
    • It must have at least 100 organizations using its generally available products as of 1 March 2015.

Reading into Gartner’s report, Oracle seems to be included primarily because people phoned up Gartner and asked about Oracle. There is some discussion about Solaris Zones and Oracle's Red Hat ripoff "Oracle Linux", but the real focus seems to be Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c management tools.

It seems that copying Red Hat Linux and then smushing together various bits of software and hardware into vertically integrated, genital crushing lock-in appliances is more than enough to get on the virtualization Magic Quadrant. That taken as fact, let's move on to Huawei.

Huawei is included in Gartner's report because of FusionSphere. What is FusionSphere, you ask? It's an an OpenStack distribution popular in the BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China. There's nothing really special about it. There are literally dozens of OpenStack distributions out there, many better than FusionSphere, and yet it's Huawei that makes it into the box.

That sound you hear is me sighing, facepalming and headesking all at the same time.

Who rules the roost, anyway?

Huawei's rise to be among the top 10 OpenStack contributors is mentioned in the Magic Quadrant. If OpenStack distributions warrant a place on the Gartner virtualization report, and being a top contributor gets special mention, then how in Cthulhu's name are Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Mirantis missing from this list? How can you have a discussion about OpenStack at all without them? It shouldn't be possible.

Even if you don't want to include Mirantis because you have start-up phobia, putting Huawei on the report and not HP or IBM is nuts. Worse, there are plenty of better offerings available.

Ericsson is a great example. I have been thoroughly impressed by what they're bringing to the table. Personally, I believe they are hands down the best choice OpenStack provider for telcos and ISPs looking to become public or hybrid cloud players. I don't see Huawei being anywhere near the quality of Ericsson's offering.

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