openstack team mailing list archive

[Clint Byrum <clint@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Excerpts from Peter Cheung's message of 2013-07-29 07:29:10 -0700:
> Dear Brian     thanks for reply. May be because there is no cheap AIX, so linux and AIX can be sell in different price range. But in here, the market is : openstack compete with ESXi or ESX essential plus. We are a consultancy firm, our sales are competing with VMware sales. In HK, vmware sales even want us die. If we die, the only competitor left is microsoft.The war here is very obvious.

Hi Peter. I understand that at times, sales negotiations can be like war,
with your client being the innocent bystanders caught in the middle.

But markets are not war-zones. Wars intrinsically expend
resources. Markets, however, grow resources and make things more
efficient, until they are outmoded, and then they shrink naturally.

So looking at VMware as a combatant on the field of battle, they are
intimidating and evoke fear. I would not want to do battle with this
well trained highly motivated battle group.

If, however, we look at VMware as neighbors, the feelings are different. I
believe that they're really just interested in developing the huge
untapped resources which are basically unavailable to them without the
cooperation and lower cost model of projects like OpenStack. 

To use an analogy, if VMware is FedEx, OpenStack is "people who want
efficient roads and airports."