I would love to get folks' feedback on proposing a subproject under Apache CloudStack, called MarketPlace. There are many ISVs, SaaS/PaaS vendors providing value-added products and services on IaaS clouds. The goal is to make their products more visible and easier to consume by anyone who deploys CloudStack. It would also allow cloud admins to offer their own marketplace to their users to get access to a variety of products and services that can be used with CloudStack.
Here is the idea: * The subproject (let's call it MarketPlace for now) will consist of source code for the CloudStack Marketplace user UI main page; a product/service listing template; an admin portal; and a repository of listing. Both the source code and listings will be part of the CloudStack Marketplace distribution. * Each listing will contain information about the product/service, the user action needed to use the product/service, and instructions for the admin to set up the product/service. Listings are contributed by sellers (i.e. ISVs, SaaS/PaaS vendors). To include a listing in the CloudStack MarketPlace distribution, the seller needs to place its XML files, graphics and code in the designated folder within the subproject. * When CloudStack is installed, the admin will have a choice to install MarketPlace including all the pre-packaged listings. The admin can then choose which listings to enable for the users to see. The admin may need to follow seller instructions to get products/services set up. * This is not a global marketplace for every CloudStack user. Each CloudStack instance will have its own marketplace if the admin chooses to install it. After CloudStack is installed, the admin should have the capability to add, delete, enable, disable, and update the listings. If a seller wants to add or update it listing for a specific CloudStack instance, s/he needs to go through the admin. To keep it simple in the first phase, I propose to support two types of listings only: SaaS/PaaS services and free image templates. Even though the image template is free, the seller can still enforce licensing and charge a fee within the application itself. To minimize product/service set up effort, in the case of image template, seller should provide a publicly accessible URL from which the image template can be downloaded. Future phases could include functions such as a seller listing publishing portal, listing approval workflow, and usage reporting, etc. Jie
