Grazed from eWeek. Author: Cameron Sturdevant.
The newly formed Open Data Center Alliance is using an array of usage models to weld cloud-using customers into a force that prevents vendor lock. At the same time, the group is promoting secure movement of virtual workloads from one provider to another. The organization is made up of more than 200 members including JPMorgan Chase, Lockheed Martin and Marriott.
While there are other nascent cloud-user organizations forming, namely CSCC (Cloud Standards Customer Council), ODCA (Open Data Center Alliance) in June issued eight usage models that organizations can use today when specifying baseline requirements for cloud projects.
The formation of both customer groups comes at a seminal moment for data center design. Virtualization is driving compute, storage, networking, application and desktop IT managers to drastically increase the efficient use of costly resources. And the option to outsource some or all virtual workloads is a bell that cannot be un-rung…