blog Most of the cloud computing stories we hear about involve major vendors. You know the ones we’re talking about: VMware, Microsoft, Salesforce.com, Amazon and so on. These are household names. But what you may not realise is that there are other options out there for building cloud computing stacks. And some of them are not based on proprietary technologies and vendor lock-in at all. iTNews reports (we recommend you click here for the full article) on a fascinating cloud computing case study in Western Australia:

“The Western Australian Institute for Medical Research will today take ownership of a private cloud solution built almost entirely of open source technologies to prepare for an influx of researchers over the coming weeks.”

Of course, most private cloud projects built in Australia involve some elements of open source. Many virtual machines, for instance, run Linux, due to the fact that it’s so easy and cheap to deploy. No need to check your Microsoft Enterprise Agreement or VMWare’s equivalent before you deploy a virtual machine. Some of the most popular stacks used by Amazon Web Services are entirely built on open source technologies. However, it’s rare to see an entire cloud computing environment built on open source. It will be fascinating to see how this project evolves down the track.

Image credit: Ian Burt, Creative Commons