Dell and Inktank Partner on the Cloud and Big Data

Dell and Inktank Partner on the Cloud and Big Data:
Last week, the open source channel buzzed with news of the Linux-based laptop built by Dell‘s (NASDAQ: DELL) Project Sputnik program. Now, the major story about Dell and open source shifts to Big Data, with an announcement of a new partnership between the hardware manufacturer and Inktank to deliver a cloud solution based on open source software. Here’s the scoop.
Inktank, which offers support services for the open source distributed file system Ceph, has made several headlines recently. Expanding from humble beginnings into a key player at the intersection of open source and Big Data, Inktank has forged several important partnerships with companies including SUSE, Citrix (NASDAQ: CTXS) and Canonical.
Inktank and Dell will partner to integrate Ceph into Dell’s cloud platform, which is based on the open source cloud infrastructure OpenStack. Inktank will be working with Dell within the framework of the latter’s Emerging Solutions Ecosystem, which the company bills as “a partnership program designed to deliver complementary and interoperable best-of-breed hardware, software and services components as part of its emerging technology solutions.”
The collaboration between Inktank and Dell means customers can deploy Ceph on Dell hardware, along with other parts of the OpenStack platform, with the reassurance that Ceph has been tested and determined to work in that configuration.

Dell and Open Source

For the open source channel, Inktank’s rapid growth and expanding list of significant partnerships is news enough. The company remains a force to watch as open source solutions establish a strong footing in the evolving Big Data environment.
At the same time, this partnership also underlines a commitment by Dell to open source technology in the cloud that has perhaps remained further under the radar than growth of emerging Big Data platforms such as Ceph. As a leading OEM for Microsoft-based hardware, Dell is not always the first server and PC manufacturer that comes to mind when one thinks of open source. But as Dell’s strong embrace of open source solutions for its cloud platform shows, the company remains quite open to non-proprietary technology.
And while that says something about Dell, it’s also an indicator of the key importance of open source solutions in the cloud and Big Data spaces themselves. Momentum in these niches is gravitating toward platforms such as Ceph and OpenStack, a trend that organizations throughout the open source channel will welcome.