Amazon EC2 team launches private cloud start-up | Hacker News Reader

Amazon EC2 team launches private cloud start-up

nimbula.com

30 pointssmn21 comments

This is potentially a lawsuit waiting to happen: the team that did it for Amazon leaves to do it again on their own, and are marketing themselves as such. I can't see how Amazon will be happily quiet with this situation.

As a user though, I welcome the competition in this market.

Unless/until Amazon objects with a legal basis, it's unfair to the team to assume this is a problem. Grant them the presumption they know what they're doing.

I do grant them all the benefit of the doubt. I want them to succeed as it would be very good to have more players in the market.

My question is when did the inconvenience of proving a real legal basis stop a big company attacking a smaller competitor? Hoover and Dyson is a good example, and in this case, it's a bit more personal.

Many companies recruit and retain good people by not being shits. They want you to be successful while you work there and after. I have little doubt these guys left with good blessings.

We should also be granting Amazon the benefit of the doubt unless/until they do something objectionable. Neither of these expecting-the-worst scenarios -- that these employees are facing legal troubles from former employer, nor that their former employer is likely to give them legal troubles -- should be assumed without evidence.

That some other 'big company' once before did something similar isn't enough to suggest there's trouble lurking here. Maybe it's enough to ask the earnest question -- "do they have Amazon's blessing?" But not predict problems -- "can't see how Amazon will be happily quiet with this situation".

The main page links a press release ( http://nimbula.com/news/2010/06/23/amazon-veterans-launch-co... ), which mentions VC investment (and beta deployments).

So, I'd assume due diligence, cleared by lawyers, etc.

They are located---surprise, surprise---in California. Non-completes and some other legal tools Amazon might use are non-operative there.

Isn't Cuil doing basically the same thing except with Google instead of Amazon?

Is that still being actively developed?

I try it out from time to time, but the Cuil blog hasn't had any activity in a while. The results seem to have improved over the past few months, but I haven't noticed any major changes.

Now it's http://www.cpedia.com/

That was my first thought as well. From Amazon's point of view, this is very much "Not cool, dude." I'm not sure at what point it becomes a legal issue, but it is definitely a dickish move.

You've been completely brainwashed ;)

I don't get how this is different to Ubuntu Cloud which provides EC2 compatible instances inside an EC2 carbon copy hypervisor with EC2 API interop.

...which is also FOSS.

http://www.ubuntu.com/cloud

A couple of points where we differ:

1. Deployment - basically, boot a seed node, then turn on machines. New nodes automatically install and come online, and are as easy to remove. This eases management when you're dealing with hundreds or thousands of machines.

2. Permissions - we've got a much finer-grained permissions system which comes in useful if you're deploying a massive cloud for use across, for example, a multi-site and multi-department organization.

3. Self-healing - we've got a lot of monitoring stuff which watches running services and migrates them around the cloud as things (inevitably) break or become unavailable.

4. Layer 2 networking - we're providing virtual layer 2 networks amongst instances, which allows dynamic creation and re-organization.

5. Multi-tenancy - there's a full multi-customer, multi-user model in the system, which allows you to easily re-sell capacity.

6. Federation - using the same user and permission framework, you can pull up instances either in the local private cloud, other people's Nimbula clouds, or in public clouds like EC2 or Rackspace (or, I guess, even accessible Ubuntu clouds).

Basically, UEC is a good choice for running a local EC2 clone, but falls down a bit when you require very large clusters or strong security. We've had the opportunity to rethink and design our own system, rather than clone an existing one, which allows us to offer a greater range of possibilities.

It will be difficult to make inroads against HP Server Automation, but I am sure people would love to see you succeed.

That being said, this is very much a solution services business. You will need more than core talent. A lot more.

Get a backbone connection with your buddies at EC2 and we'll talk.

I'd love to hear someone frank legal input on the risk of a team leaving a company to start a similar competitive product, and marketing themselves in reference to the previous company. If I work at GE, learn how to make light bulbs, then start a light bulb company leveraging all that expensive R&D but with no costs, do I have a problem?

That already happened. The company is called Venture Lighting:

Venture CEO Wayne Hellman began the development of the company after a 16-year career with General Electric, during which he pioneered innovations for metal halide lighting. Fifteen years of developing metal halide for GE convinced Mr. Hellman that a tremendous opportunity existed for a specialty metal halide lighting company. Mr. Hellman, along with a small core group of marketing and engineering managers from GE, formed Venture Lighting, literally beginning from scratch.

http://www.venturelighting.com/About_V-History.html

I don't know what would be wrong with that. As long as you don't take any IP or equipment you can generally be free to do what you want.

I found it kind of cool how out of all the possible examples that aneth could have picked, this one actually happened.

What kind of problem can you possibly have? Unless your work contract had anti-competitive clause or you're using something patented by the company you're trouble free.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com