If you are going to build a private cloud, Eucalyptus is the tool you're looking for, says CEO Mårten Mickos

There are a growing number of open source cloud infrastructure players in the market, but Eucalyptus says it is the best bet for private enterprise clouds. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix caught up with CEO Mårten Mickos, who, as the former CEO of MySQL, has loads of experience growing significant open source companies, to learn more about the company and how Mickos sees private clouds evolving. Mickos addresses where Eucalyptus fits in, typical use cases, how they are different from Piston Cloud and OpenStack, ties to Amazon (described as the Linux of today), the importance of migrating jobs to and from public clouds, plans for the $30 million in capital Eucalyptus just raised, and more in this wide-ranging chat.

You describe yourselves as an infrastructure-as-a-service software company, but why not just call yourself a private cloud software provider?

Many times we do call ourselves a private cloud software company. I think from your perspective, when you look at us and other vendors in this space, we all have different terminology for what we are. Others call themselves an orchestration layer or a cloud operating system or a cloud platform or private cloud platform, and they all essentially mean the same thing, which I think shows this market is still in its formative stages.