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SDN decouples control from network hardware. The result could be easier-to-manage networks built on lower-cost hardware. But dozens of vendors claim to have SDN solutions, and each is slightly different from the other. That chaos threatens to stall overall market innovation, partner training and customer adoption.

The OpenStack vs. Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud battle will stretch across the United States next week. Indeed, cloud consultants and integrators will flock to OpenStack Summit in Portland, Ore. (April 15-18), while Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) partners and customers will gather for an AWS Summit in New York (April 17-18). Terry Wise, head of AWS's wordwide partner ecosystem, will be on hand for the conference. For channel partners, it's nearly time to choose sides

Ubuntu 13.04 ("Raring Ringtail") is nearly here. Ah, April: Cruel though it may be, it's the month where spring finally comes to stay, and I get my tax return. Even better, it does markCanonical's unveiling of Ubuntu 13.04. And with the final beta release now out, it's time to take stock of what the latest and greatest iteration of Ubuntu has in store.

The Ubuntu love between Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) and Canonical (which has been heating up in recent months after a long lull) continued to grow this week. Indeed, Dell's Alienware gaming laptops gained Ubuntu Linux options. At a time when Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) may loan Dell roughly $2 billion, Dell is aggressively promoting Ubuntu in a way it hasn't done since circa 2008.

When HP Moonshot servers launched today, Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) was quick to note that the new Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ) servers will leverage Atom processors -- though HP does eventually plan to offer ARM-based support as well. It's a significant near-term win for Intel, which hopes to defeat potential rivals like ARM in the emerging market for so-called "microservers."

If Moore's Law—which described the growth of computing power in the 20th century—has a corollary in the 21st century, it could be that Big Data keeps getting bigger. (If I were confident no one else has already said this, and if I were more proprietary, I'd call that Tozzi's Law—but I'm a modest guy.) And the channel is reacting, as a new partnership between Pentaho and Think Big Analytics highlights.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows Azure cloud veteran Radhesh Balakrishnan has joined Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) to drive the open source company's OpenStack and virtualization strategies. Balakrishnan's career move comes at a critical time for Red Hat, which is striving to push beyond Linux to compete with Microsoft and VMware (NYSE:VMW) across private and public clouds.

Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) CEO Jim Whitehurst has long predicted open source virtualization will eventually leapfrog VMware's (NYSE:VMW) vSphere. So far that reality has not materialized. But a new Red Hat hire -- Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) cloud veteran Radhesh Balakrishnan -- will aim to change that.

When it comes to OpenStack vs VMware, a lot of misinformation is floating around the web. Read the headlines, and you might think OpenStack (the open source cloud platform) competes head-on against VMware's vSphere hypervisor. But that isn't exactly the case. Here's the reality check, including recent thoughts from VMware Executive VP Raghu Raghuram.

Red Hat's (NYSE: RHT) Q4 2013 earnings disappointed investors. But here's a riddle for channel partners: How many other software ecosystems can you find where sales are still growing nearly 20 percent annually? Plus, Red Hat is investing in storage, cloud computing, management and Big Data technologies -- areas that could provide more long-term growth opportunities for channel partners -- despite apparent concerns from Wall Street.

In the second major news item this week involving corporate growth at an open source Big Data vendor, Pentaho has announced three new executive hires. Their addition, the company says, will help it to expand development of its Big Data analytics products as well as drive increased revenue growth.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said the search giant’s Android and Chrome operating systems will not be combined into one platform but did allow that some overlap between the two might occur, according to reports. Here are the details.

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is opening up geographic availability of the Acer, Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) and Samsung Chromebooks to Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands to consumers, businesses and schools, according to a company blog post.

VMware (NYSE: VMW) is taking some heat because the virtualization company’s forthcoming public cloud will not be based on OpenStack, the open source platform. Some critics worry VMware’s approach will lead to an expensive, closed platform. But let’s do a reality check, folks: Take a look at many of the major public clouds — Amazon, Google Compute Engine, Microsoft Windows Azure — and there’s nary a mention of OpenStack. Even Oracle now has built a $1 billion cloud business without thinking much about OpenStack. So what’s the message for partners?

Netflix‘s lack of official support for Linux may not do much to help its popularity within the open source world. Yet in a sign that the company does remain eager to wield stronger influence in this space–especially where it intersects with the cloud–it has announced a contest for open source developers “to build something cool using or modifying our open source software.” And it has committed a fair amount of cash to seeing the initiative through.

If you check in with a range of OpenStack industry sources, experts suggest a flood of training and certifications are nearing launch. For companies building public and private clouds that could be great news. Here's why.

The United Kingdom’s official endorsement of open source software, which became public just a few days ago, seems too important to miss, particularly for the implications it could have for businesses, governments and other organizations throughout the industry.

In what appears to be a growing penchant among open source developers for naming things after Soviet spacecraft, Canonical recently announced a new project called Mir. And while it doesn’t actually have much (or anything) to do with outer space, it could have major implications for open source user interfaces throughout the channel–not to mention for Canonical itself as it strives to “converge” its Ubuntu offerings across a range of hardware devices.

Back around July 2012, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) predicted big things from a new round of products — Windows 8, tablets, Phone 8, Office 365, Office 2013. In fact, Microsoft compared its current product refresh cycle to 1995, when Windows 95 and Office 95 triggered a sales boom. Soon after Windows NT 4.0 took enterprise servers and workstations by storm. But Microsoft's logic was flawed. Here's why.

The biggest headlines Canonical has made recently have involved its endeavor to “converge” Ubuntu across devices by adding support for phones, tablets and TVs. But in a sign that it remains invested in the server realm as well–and that it is continuing to build a closer relationship with Dell –Canonical has also announced a new agreement to support Ubuntu on Dell PowerEdge servers.