Earlier this year during the 2008 Velocity Conference EngineYard made some fairly big waves (Google search) pre-announcing their open source cloud management tool, Vertebra.
This was of particular interest to me because of the CloudScale Project. We spent a considerable amount of time building a sysadmin messaging bus, but were never 100% happy with it. Vertebra looked like just the ticket, it would be open, and hopefully widely embraced, perhaps making our lives easier.
At the time, the EngineYard (EY) folks promised ‘right after summer’. With December literally right around the corner, you’ve got to wonder whether this vaporware will ever really show up. Given the recent layoff of the Rubinius team from EngineYard it seems logical to conclude that their management realizes that too many over-funded R&D projects aren’t necessarily going to be in the companies long term best interests.
Merb made it out the gate thankfully, but will Vertebra? There hasn’t been a single public release since it was pre-announced almost 6 months ago so I’m going to hazard a guess that we’ll either never see it or at least not for a long time. Maybe Velocity Conference 2009??
Come on, EngineYard, just get it out there, warts and all. Either it will gather some more support and live or it won’t.
Update: EY just released Vertebra today (2008/12/19). Find out more here.
