Cloud Interoperability and The Battle For The Open Cloud
April 26, 2013
Grazed from Forbes. Author: Reuven Cohen.
Cloud interoperability and portability seems to be a hot topic these days. This topic is one that I have a bit of experience with. Back in 2008, I had the fortune, or possibly misfortune, of starting one of the first groups dedicated to the discussion of Cloud interoperability, aptly titled, “The Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum”. For a while this Google group was a popular forum for the discussion of various interop and standardization challenges, but it ultimately faded as politics, personalities and priorities shifted. Five years later, I thought I’d revisit the discussion.
A lot has changed since those early days, Amazon still dominates and many of the early cloud pioneers have long been acquired. In addition, a new crop of players have emerged as serious treats to the incumbent players in the space. The companies who were previously viewed as incumbent are now the challengers in this quickly evolving cloud battleground…
I recently had the chance to attend the OpenStack Summit, a gathering of cloud computing companies, contributors and enthusiasts focused on the popular open source cloud infrastructure project originally created by NASA and Rackspace. Interestingly, one of the biggest discussions was around who is or isn’t fully compatible with the project itself. Many within the project resorted to calling out some of the largest contributors, such as HP and Rackspace, as not being “interoperable” with the project itself. Roger Levy, VP & GM of HP Cloud Services, responded that this was “categorically false”, telling me that HP actually provides the very tools used to determine whether others are complying with the OpenStack API…
Read more from the source @ http://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2013/04/26/cloud-interoperability-and-the-battle-for-the-open-cloud/