The open source version, branded openQRM, will include most of the features of its existing QRM product.
OpenQRM performs most of the basics of server management including usage tracking and reporting, automated policy-based provisioning, image management allowing resource sharing, virtualization of applications from underlying hardware. It has an architecture that supports plug-in of bells and whistles such as user interfaces, monitor agents, and decision tools.
Making the case for automated management tools, Qlusters CEO Ofer Shoshan claims that Lintel blades have hidden costs compared to more mature, but pricier mainframes or UNIX SMP servers.
Based on figures supplied by Tradeware, a firm that handles 5% of all transactions on the New York and American stock exchanges, Shoshan estimated that the total cost of ownership of Lintel blade averages $7,000 a year or higher. He estimated that 60% of that cost was tied up in staffing and time required for server management.
While he didn’t have any comparable figures for Solaris servers, Shoshan maintained that the Lintel environment is far costlier to manage because the commodity hardware has higher failure rates and because Linux is a less mature OS.
Under the new open source arrangement, Qlusters will introduce annual subscriptions similar to the Red Hat/JBoss model that will list at $750/server annually. Or the company will continue offering traditional perpetual licenses at roughly the same cost. Shoshan said that the company would still offer add-ons that are not open sourced, but did not specify what they would be.
Since Qlusters first released source code to SourceForge about a month ago, Shoshan claims it has ranked as number 43 in popularity out of over 110,000 active projects listed on the site.
