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.
Microsoft opposition is a given (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft opposition is a given (Score:4, Insightful)
Could anyone summarize what this "cloud computing" is, and why exactly is it so newsworthy? I tried to read the wiki, but it burned out my buzzword detector in the second sentence.
Re:Microsoft opposition is a given (Score:3, Insightful)
So it doesn't really mean anything, just sounds cool?
That would explain why the wiki is so marvellously information-free.
Re:whatWHAT? (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft... complains about something because it is too secretive?
Hard to corrupt something you're excluded from...</paranoid>
Yes they do. (Score:5, Insightful)
Open Standards never work
So how did you manage to post that?
Microsoft is trolling (Score:4, Insightful)
I think Microsoft is trolling. In this specific troll posting they are exploiting the fact that people don't realize that an open standard process does not necessarily result in an open standard. The reality is probably that the manifesto group is not willing to get subverted by them ('subvertible' is MS's definition of 'open').
Their mode of action seems to be: first try to subvert a standards process to introduce proprietary technology into it, thus giving itself an advantage; if that fails, call the process "not open enough". Proceed to form a new "more open" standards process stacked with Microsoft partners that competes with the existing one.
You are talking edge cases (Score:4, Insightful)
For starters, you will not run your HIPAA compliant health care system or your damn investment bank datacenter using some random shmucks pool of servers. That is silly. Privacy issues aside, both systems probably have very predictable loads and wouldn't benefit from cloud computing.
Second, even if you did, you'll probably be able to specify which data centers your virtual machines will run. After all, they want to charge you more for running stuff overseas!
Third, you aren't the market. Startups and web companies with spikey traffic are. If you have a predictable amount of traffic, odds are good this kind of provisioning would cost more. But if you are prone to unpredictable spikes, or you just don't want to deal with maintaining your own equipment, this is probably a good deal.
Lastly, just because RMS says something is evil [guardian.co.uk], doesn't mean he is right. I'll just leave it at that. I know you didn't specify the keyword "RMS", but rest assured that there are a lot of "haters" who have never even heard of the term before that windbag piped up. Now they hate it without even knowing what it means (kinda like how RMS hates it without understanding it).
This statement makes no sense. You take advantage of it by *not* using it. That is the point. You only pay for what you use and no more. Prior to cloud computing (okay, the term is kinda silly), you'd have to provision for your peak load. Now you just provision for your baseline and fire up a potentially infinite pool of servers during peak loads.
FUD (Score:4, Insightful)
So in other words, the "Microsoft is opposing such a Wonderful Thing (tm)" is all speculation?
Yes you might justifiably call that FUD but In view of past experience with Microsoft, I'd say this sort of speculation is a lot more likely to turn out to be true than if we were dealing with any other randomly selected evil mega-corp. Micosoft is sitting on a hugely profitable dominant market share in a number of areas. If they lose a significant proportion of that market share they will find it significantly harder to regain that market share than it was to lose it. I'd say it's a safe bet that executives@microsoft.com spend a lot of time these days being paranoid about repeating past mistakes like when they slept through the search engine revolution and suddenly woke up to find that Google had mushroomed into a dangerous rival in a key market segment almost over night. To add insult to injury Google had actually achieved a dominant market share in that very important market segment and has proven frustratingly capable of defending it.
But in reality, it's about the data (Score:4, Insightful)
Moving system images around isn't that tough to do, but moving the context of that image and it's data are still challenges that lead to differences between the VM providers. If it were as simple as "provide an image", then there wouldn't be much of a market for the cloud computing providers to compete over.
This is a young industry. It's far too early to try to standardize on stacks beyond those being provided by the players in the cloud industry. Sure one could pick a stack of best-of-breed FOSS solutions for the raw technology, but that's not going to address the real interoperability costs of getting the raw data closer to the users without losing integrity.
Cloud computing on different scales (Score:2, Insightful)
That may all be true, for certain providers. But it is not true for "cloud computing" as a concept. Cloud computing is about using the network to make the most of available hardware.
It can be implemented on the scale of just a few dozen computers in a single site. LTSP is an example of this. DistCC is an example. Open/Mosix is an example. Hell even VMWare is an example.
It can also be implemented on the scale of a single global corporation. And there are many advantages to this. Lots of people are already (willingly) using "low-resource hardware" to access the net, because it is mobile and convenient. Giving them access to all of their data so that they can work while on-the-go is a huge advantage. When implemented on this scale, there is no loss of privacy, no anti-piracy interests involved, and FOSS only benefits because only open-standards based software is flexible enough to offer these type of solutions on this scale.
Ultimately, though "cloud computing" is not a "scheme". It is a computing paradigm grounded in the economic principle of making the most of available resources. The limited resources of computing (energy, processing-time, storage, bandwidth) will ultimately be optimized using flexible software and free-market principles. "Cloud" computing, utility computing, terminals and virtualization are all just slight variations on this theme. You are free to use any and all of them, or none at all, depending on your resources and preferences.