The Linux Foundation made several membership announcements over the weekend, welcoming new members Cloudsoft, Cloudscaling, CloudSigma and DreamHost to the fold at LinuxCon Europe, currently being held in Barcelona.
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In addition to its new cloud-centric members, existing participants Citrix and HP both upped their levels of commitment to the foundation, with Citrix moving from silver to gold membership, and HP moving from gold to platinum. Gold membership requires a $100,000 annual corporate contribution, while platinum membership costs $500,000 per year.
According to the foundation, HP's move to the platinum level gives the company a seat on the group's board of directors -- giving it greater say in the direction of the foundation.
"Linux is a strategic asset for all major technology companies. With our Linux Foundation platinum membership, we will have a variety of ways to maximize our investment in Linux and collaborative development that advances our own business as well as greater industry innovation," Eileen Evans, HP vice president and associate general counsel for cloud computing and open source, said in a statement.
Citrix's move up reflects its involvement in the Apache CloudStack and Xen projects, according to the foundation -- with the Xen hypervisor being particularly important to the group's future cloud plans. Server virtualization is central to the development of new cloud technologies.
Those technologies were -- as their names might have revealed -- the focus for the new members of the Linux Foundation. OpenStack-powered Cloudscaling is a cloud infrastructure company, while CloudSigma does something similar with KVM, and Cloudsoft specializes in application management across different platforms. DreamHost, the well-known Web hosting provider, is also getting in on the cloud act, offering its own cloud computing product, DreamCompute.
"We know that openness in cloud computing is key for ensuring that the freedoms we've come to enjoy in the IT market continue," said Amanda McPherson, vice president of marketing and developer services at the Linux Foundation. "Our newest members Cloudscaling, CloudSigma, Cloudsoft and DreamHost recognize the importance of this, too, and we're looking forward to working with them."
Email Jon Gold at jgold@nww.com and follow him on Twitter at @NWWJonGold.
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