Canonical has unveiled a beta version of AWSOME (Any Web Service Over ME), an open source proxy service that helps users who currently use Amazon Web Services (AWS) to migrate to OpenStack's cloud computing platform. AWSOME will be included as an install option in the server edition of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS which is scheduled to be released later this month.

The developers point out, however, that this beta release only provides basic functionality at the moment. AWSOME supports sufficient AWS EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) and S3 (Simple Storage Service) to allow Canonical's Juju orchestration application to start and stop instances, and manage security groups. For long term use, Canonical recommends using OpenStack natively to exploit all of the platform's capabilities. AWSOME is, therefore, intended as a temporary bridge for users looking to switch from Amazon's service to OpenStack.

This announcement comes less than a month after Eucalyptus had announced a deal with Amazon that ties their private cloud offerings and AWS closer together. Eucalyptus is largely API-compatible with Amazon's services and used to be Canonical's cloud solution of choice for Ubuntu before the company decided to switch to OpenStack.

The source code for the AWSOME project can be downloaded from Canonical's Launchpad project hosting site and is licensed under the AGPLv3.

(fab)