The cloud and the future OSS

Larry Dennison, the MIT computer science and engineering Ph.D. who co-founded core router vendor Avici Systems and control-plane pure-play Soapstone Networks, is at it again.

This time he's set his sights on the future operations support system - the one needed to support cloud computing and monetize third-party applications in an open-source environment. Though he isn't saying exactly which piece of the puzzle his new start-up, Lightwolf Technologies, will supply, he will say this: Cloud computing is bringing a paradigm shift toward usage-based, rather than capacity-based, accounting, as well as dynamic, quick-session allocation of networking, computing and storage infrastructure - all of which will require much more sophisticated provisioning, billing and performance-monitoring systems than are presently used.

And while the current crop of cloud computing pioneers - Amazon.com, Google, Microsoft, etc. - slug it out for early market dominance, they are still just carving out specific chunks of the overall market. “There are still a lot of business centers out there that haven't been touched by the big boys,” Dennison said.

Telecom service providers could play an important role in the cloud, he added, because, at a minimum, they link the cloud to the client, and all the performance and security needs that apply to the cloud apply to the transport network in between. In addition, telcos could apply the micropayment processing expertise they developed through things such as voicemail and ringtones.

But truly maximizing the cloud's platform-as-a-service potential means fostering an open-source environment for application developers to use - a notion telcos haven't completely warmed to yet. Telcos are reluctant in part because they see service quality control as a key differentiator and don't want to take responsibility for the quality of every lone-gun app out there. But that may be at least partly a matter of branding, Dennison said. “Carriers could add value through security, availability, up-time, etc.,” he said, “and create a brand identity around that without necessarily saying they know anything about your favorite app.”