Eucalyptus Systems

About Eucalyptus Systems

Eucalyptus Systems emerged from academic research at the University of California, Santa Barbara, led by Professor Rich Wolski and a team of researchers. The project's roots trace back to the NSF-funded VGrADS project (2003-2008), which focused on grid and cloud computing. The company was officially formed in 2009 to commercialize the open-source software, securing an initial $5.5 million in funding from Benchmark Capital. The founding team included Rich Wolski (CTO), computer science researchers, and entrepreneur Woody Rollins (CEO).

The company developed an open-source software platform for building on-premise private and hybrid cloud environments compatible with Amazon Web Services (AWS). This core offering, named Eucalyptus (an acronym for Elastic Utility Computing Architecture for Linking Your Programs To Useful Systems), enabled IT organizations to create their own Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) clouds. The business model centered on offering both a free open-source version and a commercially supported enterprise edition, monetizing through support and enterprise-grade features for clients. The platform's key benefit was allowing organizations to pool and dynamically scale their own compute, storage, and network resources while using the same industry-standard AWS APIs they were familiar with, including EC2, S3, and IAM. This facilitated a seamless transition for workloads between a private Eucalyptus cloud and the AWS public cloud.

A significant milestone was the formal agreement with Amazon Web Services in March 2012, which aimed to enhance compatibility between the two platforms. In 2010, former MySQL CEO Mårten Mickos took over as CEO of Eucalyptus Systems. The company's trajectory culminated in its acquisition by Hewlett-Packard (HP) in September 2014 for a reported sum under $100 million. Following the acquisition, Mickos was appointed to lead HP's cloud division with the goal of integrating Eucalyptus into HP's Helion cloud portfolio. However, HP's public cloud offering was shut down by the end of 2016. The Eucalyptus team was later transferred to DXC Technology in 2017, which subsequently discontinued development. In response, members of the original founding team forked the code to continue its development and support under a new entity, AppScale Systems.