As you may have seen on several websites, there are various vendors playing around with the term “OS”.
In fact, “OS” in IT language stands for the acronym “Operating System”. An OS facilitates all peripheral and internal devices of a computer by handling, delivering and managing their functions and data.
Currently, HP is advertizing their new HP Cloud OS. But after we take a closer look at the Software, we find that it is based on Ubuntu, which is actually an Linux operating system. So, HP has really only designed a new graphical user interface (GUI) with some add-on tools to the OpenStack toolset. But this is not an OS, because it still needs an OS below to communicate with the computer.
It is very difficult for users to find out, what a system really does and what “cloud” is all about. And it seems to me that in the cloud area people tend to mix up with the definitions of devices and software. But this will just lead us to a total confusion!
In my humble opinion, this is not very helpful. If we do so, it would lead us to my favorite claim “Cloud is virtually anything”.
But if we make everything so “cloudy”, nobody will know what a software or project stands for.
To make it very clear, and since we have been asked to do so: Interactive Cloud OS is an Operating System. Yes, we do bundle it with the OpenStack Foundation GUI to give users a simple way to work with their servers and to manage the virtual servers and any services they wish to use.
But of course, if you don’t like the GUI, you are free to use another one with Interactive Cloud OS. There are alternatives to OpenStack… just ask us.
With our OS, you always get the freedom of choice.