Standards Across Cloud Service Models
Cloud computing is being adopted by all size organizations, this is a revolutionary shift in information technology that is transforming the way we work and is clearly illustrated with cloud solutions like Salesforce.com, Google Apps, and Concur for SaaS, Microsoft Azure and Cloud Foundry for PaaS, and Amazon EC2 and Rackspace for IaaS. Standards for how these different types of cloud service models work together will provide cloud consumer's value.
Standards Within Cloud Service Models
Within each layer of the cloud service model (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS), open standards help prevent vendor lock-in.
Open standards and standard APIs are all about portability, the most applicable open standards to cloud computing are those adopted by the non-profit Open Cloud Initiative (OCI), a non-profit advocate of open cloud computing that was launched at OSCON in 2011.
OCI's requirements for an open cloud are:
- Open Formats: All user data and metadata must be represented in open standard formats
- Open Interfaces: All functionality must be exposed by the way of open standard interfaces