The Great Open Dilemma

NowCloud Computing vendors are increasingly embracing “openness” in their products and platforms. The adoption is a result of demand for openness among the users and any vendor who try to lock-in users’ data inside a proprietary enclosure faces the real danger of losing out in the competitive marketplace. Openness has moved from being a moral issue to a strategic issue. However, it also poses an unique dilemma to the Cloud Computing vendors.

Unlike in the traditional Open Source world where it is possible to develop a software without incurring any expenses (except for the time spent by the volunteer developers), Cloud based products incur heavy expenses in the form of computing resources. For example, if a Cloud vendor opens up their service using an Open Protocol, they pay heavily for the computing resources when third party developers access their service using these Open Protocols. The vendor subscribing to openness is now faced with an unique dilemma of minimizing expenditure while playing to the spirit of openness. Twitter is a very good example of a vendor struggling to find a way to effectively monetize theaccessto their service.

Continues @http://www.cloudave.com/link/the-great-open-dilemma