Cloud Computing Standard
The DMTF (Distributed Management Task Force) announced yesterday, April 27, the formation of a working group dedicated to the development of a set of specifications for the management of resources in the Cloud.
The group, Open Cloud Standards Incubator, will focus mainly on interoperability between private and public clouds, perhaps developing management protocols, package formats and security to facilitate integrations.
The group will be formed by the usual names:
• AMD – Paul Vancil
• Cisco – Steve Diamond
• Citrix – Abolfazl Sirjani
• EMC – Wayne Adams
• HP – Nigel Cook
• IBM – Mike Baskey
• Intel – Billy Cox
• Microsoft – John Parchem
• Novell – Alan Murray
• Sun – Mark Carlson
• Red Hat – Mike Evans
• Savvis – Ken Owens
• VMware – Winston Bumpus
Very strange is the total absence in the group of ISPs that currently provide Cloud services, such as Amazon for example, which has in fact already created a standard.
The objectives and timeline are already defined:
Phase 1
• Cloud Taxonomy – 3Q09
• Cloud Trust requirements – 3Q09
• Alliance partner identification – 3Q09
• Use cases and requirements for Cloud Profiles – 3Q09
• Cloud Interoperability White Paper – 3Q09
Phase 2
• Proposed Profiles – 4Q09
• Proposed OVF changes for cloud usage – 1Q10
• Proposed Changes for DMTF Standards – 1Q10
The intent is decidedly noble, like all DMTF initiatives, but as for the OVF (Open Virtualization Format Specification) standard, it has not been respected by everyone, currently only VMware’s ESX allows its use and exploits its potential. In a Cloud Computing standard, the use of a single format for Virtual Machines is of fundamental importance, without it there can be no interoperability between different Clouds.
However, credit must be given to a previous initiative created more than anything else to clarify the area and to give organizations one more tool to understand its advantages. The OpenCloudManifesto which currently has 175 supporters.
