Microsoft, Amazon Oppose Cloud Computing Interoperability Plan 121
thefickler writes "Microsoft is opposing an industry plan, the Open Cloud Manifesto, to promote cloud computing interoperability. Officially, Microsoft says the plan is unnecessarily secretive and that cloud computing is still in an early stage of development,
but there are allegations that Microsoft feels threatened by the plan because it could boost Linux-based systems. The goal of the group behind the manifesto, the Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum (CCIF), is to minimize the barriers between different technologies used in cloud computing. And this is where the problem seems to lie, with the group stating that 'whenever possible the CCIF will emphasize the use of open, patent-free and/or vendor-neutral technical solutions.' Some speculate that Microsoft is actually worried that this will allow open source systems, such as Linux, to flourish, at the expense of Microsoft technology."
Amazon is also declining to support the plan, saying, "the best way to illustrate openness and customer flexibility is by what you actually provide and deliver for them." Reader smack.addict contributes a link to an O'Reilly piece asking what openness really means for cloud computing.
Re:Microsoft opposition is a given (Score:5, Informative)
In the broad senses, it's not really caring where your data or applications is. So it could be stored in some data center half a world away.
It's just always available.
You ask 7 people for anything more specific then that and you will get 9 answers.
Basically, it is not caring about servers (Score:5, Informative)
You don't have to maintain infrastructure to deal with your peak loads. You just have to keep enough to handle the baseline and than when you get hammered, you "turn on" more "computers" as you go. In theory, those "computers" could be located anywhere, so if you are mentioned on some UK news show and get hammered over there, you can "turn on" more of your "computers" to handle the load and turn them off when you are done.
In other words, basically, you have an infinite amount of computers which start almost instantly that you pay by the hour/minute for. Each of them boots off a standard image you control and all of the service providers have ways to script things like "hey, I've just been booted! lets tell the load balancer to add me to the pool!"
In yet other words, it is basically like a distributed virtual server. Take a single image and on-demand, load up as many virtual servers as you need.
Are we reading the same article? (Score:2, Informative)
The 'Open Cloud Manifesto' will launch on Monday in New York. Itâ(TM)s a joint project that includes IBM, Amazon and Google among many others and aims to produce guidelines for how different operating systems should interact in cloud computing. Thatâ(TM)s a name given to services which run online rather than on a userâ(TM)s computer: think Gmail vs Microsoft Outlook for an idea.
And the CNet article does not imply a rejection by Amazon, it states:
"Like other ideas on standards and practices, we'll review this one," Amazon said in a statement. "Ideas on openness and standards have been talked about for years in Web services. And we do believe standards will continue to evolve in the cloud-computing space.
From inside the trenches (Score:4, Informative)
From someone that is following this closely from within the "cloud services community", has read every article, every relevant blog, twitter, forum, and newsgroup post, I hope I can bring some enlightenment to this issue.
The CCIF is an organization that is supposed to be little more than an "open forum" between those in the cloud services community. I'm not certain if its role should even be to make such statements or issue documents, but if it is, that those statements should be discussed and agreed upon by its members. This manifesto appears to have been created secretly by the founders of the CCIF without discussion, review, or disclosure directly in contrast to the goals and promises of the CCIF. Instead, that review and disclosure only happened behind closed doors with "large companies" such as Microsoft and IBM. As I made it quite clear on the CCIF newsgroup, regardless of the origin of the document, it is of my opinion that the CCIF as an organization should not endorse any documents without a vote by its members.
So far, it seems the plan is that the CCIF will officially release this document on Monday, prior to the meeting it will hold on Thursday in NYC. I hope that those behind the scenes here realize that the best course of action is to wait until Thursday and secure a vote by members present at that time.