As you read this, thousands of developers all over the world, inside enterprises big and small, are digging into our Amazon S3 API all the way down to the source code. We can’t wait to see what they create! It’s only a matter of time, and we’re nudging things forward. Find out for yourself what everyone’s raving about: get hands-on with S3 Server now.
Why the world is coming to open source
From the smallest of seedlings, open source has grown into THE innovation engine for IT. It’s no mystery why: lower development and operational costs, faster time to market, freedom from proprietary vendor lock-ins, high-quality solutions… and thanks to source code accessibility, the freedom to customize and fix at will.
According to the annual 2016 “Future of Open Source” study by North Bridge and Black Duck, “Open source improves efficiency, interoperability, and innovation.” More than 65% of companies now use it for application development, and over 55% for production infrastructure.
We chose to make S3 Server open source for all these reasons, plus one more: open source has also become the fast path for sprouting and spreading hot new technology. Think Docker, Hadoop and their ecosystems, as well as NoSQL and NewSQL databases, just to take a few examples.
Not unexpectedly, open source is converging with another transformational IT phenomenon: the cloud. To paraphrase InfoWorld, if software is eating the world, the cloud is eating open source applications. Many winners of their 2015 Best of Open Source Software Awards (the “Bossies”) have a SaaS or hosted option.
The convergence is real: open source has definitely been folded into the great cloud migration. Still, there’s more than one way to get there. The public cloud, as pervasive as it may be, is not the best choice for every organization, every use case, every time. There are other paths to the same cost savings, dynamic scalability, and management ease. Which leads directly to the question:
Should we deploy on a public cloud or a private one?
Our emphatic answer is: Yes! That is, choose whichever model is best for your needs and each use case. Either way, your S3 Server-built applications have you covered. They will run impeccably on either kind of cloud, without your having to change a single line of code. How’s that for flexibility?
Dev and test with S3 Server. Then deploy on AWS, or alternatively, in your own data center using the Scality RING with industry-standard x86 hardware you’ve already invested in. Or go with a single-tenant private cloud hosted by a provider.
Any which way, you’ll gain immense scalability, vast TCO savings over traditional storage, and another advantage that’s truly unique: full application portability without having to rewrite code.
Born free
Open source is not an afterthought for S3 Server. It’s part of the very fabric. Open source is dear to our hearts because it’s the locus of originality, excitement, and innovation in IT today. We love the magic that happens when talented developers put their energy, ideas, and visions together to build something new. In fact, S3 Server was created from the work product of a gathering of hackers. Some of whom impressed us so much that we hired them.
Not a bad outcome for our very first hackathon! So we’ve just done it again:
Innovation on Display at Holberton Hackathon in San Francisco
On October 21-23, Scality brought together 6 teams of ambitious and talented developers to collaboratively build some great tools with Scality S3 Server and an array of Kinetic drives from our partner Seagate.
Participants included 2 UC Santa Cruz grad students, an exchange student from Australia, a UC Berkeley junior who’s won 5 hackathons so far this year, several first-time hackers from the Holberton School… and a coder nicknamed “Nacho” from the original Kinetic development team at Seagate.
First prize went to the intrepid “Team 42,” a youthful posse of French developers newly relocated to Silicon Valley to open the first U.S. office of Paris-based 42. They took top honors for their ingenious S3 Server-based collaboration tool.
Learn more about the Hackathon teams and their projects here.
