IBM leads IT Companies in Proclaiming “Open Cloud Manifesto”
IBM, AT&T, Sun, RedHat, Rackspace, SAP, and other companies (see full list below) joined together to endorse what is being called the “Open Cloud Manifesto” last week as part of a new push to define the next era of data servers on the internet. According to industry reports, Google and Amazon might be part of the group but were not included in the initial group of signatories. The entire venture is being seen as an aggressive open source challenge to Microsoft due to requirements such as “Cloud providers must not use their market position to lock customers into their particular platforms and limit their choice of providers” and “Cloud providers must use and adopt existing standards wherever appropriate. The IT industry has invested heavily in existing standards and standards organizations; there is no need to duplicate or reinvent them”.
For those interested, you can read the Cloud Manifesto in its entirety.
The document begins with a description of media hype:
The buzz around cloud computing has reached a fever pitch. Some believe it is a disruptive trend representing the next stage in the evolution of the Internet. Others believe it is hype, as it uses long established computing technologies. As with any new trend in the IT world, organizations must figure out the benefits and risks of cloud computing and the best way to use this technology.
One thing is clear: The industry needs an objective, straightforward conversation about how this new computing paradigm will impact organizations, how it can be used with existing technologies, and the potential pitfalls of proprietary technologies that can lead to lock-in and limited choice.
This document is intended to initiate a conversation that will bring together the emerging cloud computing community (both cloud users and cloud providers) around a core set of principles. We believe that these core principles are rooted in the belief that cloud computing should be as open as all other IT technologies.
They then seek to define exactly what cloud computing is1:
The key characteristics of the cloud are the ability to scale and provision computing power dynamically in a cost efficient way and the ability of the consumer (end user, organization or IT staff) to make the most of that power without having to manage the underlying complexity of the technology. The cloud architecture itself can be private (hosted within an organization’s firewall) or public (hosted on the Internet). These characteristics lead to a set of core value propositions:
- Scalability on Demand
- Streamlining the Data Center
- Improving Business Processes
- Minimizing Startup Costs
The five main challenges that cloud computing must address:
- Security
- Data and Application Interoperability
- Data and Application Portability
- Governance and Management
- Metering and Monitoring
The Goals of an Open Cloud:
- Choice
- Flexibility
- Speed and Agility
- Skills
The Principles of an Open Cloud:
Of course, many clouds will continue to be different in a number of important ways, providing unique value for organizations. It is not our intention to define standards for every capability in the cloud and create a single homogeneous cloud environment. Rather, as cloud computing matures, there are several key principles that must be followed to ensure the cloud is open and delivers the choice, flexibility and agility organizations demand:
- Cloud providers must work together to ensure that the challenges to cloud adoption (security, integration, portability, interoperability, governance/management, metering/monitoring) are addressed through open collaboration and the appropriate use of standards.
- Cloud providers must not use their market position to lock customers into their particular platforms and limit their choice of providers.
- Cloud providers must use and adopt existing standards wherever appropriate. The IT industry has invested heavily in existing standards and standards organizations; there is no need to duplicate or reinvent them.
- When new standards (or adjustments to existing standards) are needed, we must be judicious and pragmatic to avoid creating too many standards. We must ensure that standards promote innovation and do not inhibit it.
- Any community effort around the open cloud should be driven by customer needs, not merely the technical needs of cloud providers, and should be tested or verified against real customer requirements.
- Cloud computing standards organizations, advocacy groups, and communities should work together and stay coordinated, making sure that efforts do not conflict or overlap.
Companies and organizations that currently support the open cloud manifesto are listed as2:
AT&T, Abiquo, Accario, Akamai, ALTIC. Org, AMD, Aptana, Appistry, Arista Networks, Barcelona Supercomputing Center Blend digital, Boomi, Business Logic, Cast Iron, Cisco, CSC, Dilgenter, the Eclipse Foundation, Elastra, EMC, Enomaly, Engine Yard, enStratus, F5, Global Media Solutions, GoGrid, Heroku, Hyperic, IBM, In Cloud Company SL, Juniper, LongJump, Luminis Innovation Consulting, ManualsMania, Metadot, MyCube9.com, newScale, Northwest A&F University (Shanxi, China), North Carolina State University, Nirvanix, Novell, the Object Management Group, Okuri Ventures, Open Cloud Consortium, Open-XChange, Prgmr.com, PointStar, QuadraForte, Rackspace, Rails Machine, Red Hat, Tech4Quant, Terremark Worldwide, the Hot Air Channel, the Reservoir Project, Trend Micro, RightScale, rPath, Saasmania, S3 Graphics, Soasta, Sogeti, Sun, Synapses, Technical University of Catalonia, Telefonica, the Open Group, Velneo SA, Venue Software, Veredas, VMware, Voxeo, VPS.net and Zenoss.
The Open Cloud Manifesto is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License
For more information: http://opencloudmanifesto.org/supporters.htm
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