LOGIN | REGISTER NOW | SUBSCRIBE
 
print Printable version 
Most Read Latest News Blog Resources
Does Windows cost Microsoft opportunities?
Microsoft's decision to focus .NET on Windows is stifling innovation due to the specter of...

Mono brings .NET to Android
At Microsoft MIX, Mono will unveil the ability to port .NET applications to the Android op...

Going 'all in' on .NET as default runtime
Programmers for Windows Phone 7 will need to use Silverlight and XNA for development

Digg!  Digg
Reddit  Reddit
Slashdot  Slashdot
Share on facebook  Facebook
Share on Twitter  Twitter

Zeichick's Take: A few words about cloud standards


By Alan Zeichick
February 25, 2009 — 
Does cloud computing need standards? In a word, yes. Should we have push to cloud companies to create those standards now? In two words, not yet.

Open, honest standards are vital to the widespread adoption of technologies because they foster interoperability, innovation and evolution. New technologies are built on top of standards because standards provide a stable base. Standards represent best practices and pragmatic compromises. They provide everyone—software companies and enterprise alike—with the assurance that what they build today should be usable tomorrow.

We need cloud computing standards to ensure that virtual machine images can be ported from one cloud provider to another. We need standards to make sure that applications can be migrated from the data center into the cloud and back again, and from one cloud to another. We need standards to allow enterprises to compare one cloud provider to another, and to deploy applications across multiple providers with ease. We need standards to allow a third-party ecosystem to flourish.

We need those standards. But we don’t need them yet, even though some enterprise customers (and third-party service providers) are already clamoring for them. Indeed, at IDC’s Cloud Computing Forum last week in San Francisco, I listened as IDC analysts pounded the cloud companies to “listen to their customers” and create standards immediately.

Bad idea! Standards, hastily enacted, can stifle innovation. Cloud computing is in an early experimental growth stage. Sure, we have some well-entrenched early success stories, such as Amazon, Google and Salesforce.com, but it would be a potential tragedy to allow the early work of three companies to be codified as standards. We need time for their cloud offerings to shake out for a few years. We need time for new players to enter the market with new technologies—and new ideas. We need time to broaden the base upon which the standards are made to go beyond commercial interests.

It’s always suboptimal when a few big companies get together to create standards, whether de facto through their market power or de jure through a standards body. I’d love to see more work from the academic community, from open-source projects and from other organizations, before we insist that cloud companies freeze their experiments and call them standards, standards that we’d have to live with for years to come.

Instead, cloud providers should open up their formats and APIs, publishing them for all to use, and then let a thousand flowers of innovation bloom without the worry of premature standardization crushing the new ideas.


Share this link: http://www.sdtimes.com/link/33294
 

Add comment


Name*
Email*  
Country     


  • Comment
  • Preview
Loading



 
 
 
 
News on Monday
more>>
SharePoint Tech Report
more>>


   

 
 
Download Current Issue
ISSUE 3/15/2010 PDF

Need Back Issues?
DOWNLOAD HERE

Receive the print Edition?


 
blogs tab
Google Code turns 5
Google Code Turns 5, and adds a Paxos Algorithm to make the system more stable and reliable.
03/17/2010 11:16 AM EST

Test your Visual Studio 2010 know-how
Microsoft is offering free beta certification exams for Visual Studio 2010.
03/17/2010 11:08 AM EST

Microsoft lifts the hood on IE9
Microsoft is previewing IE9.
03/16/2010 01:10 PM EST

 

Events calendar tab
EclipseCon
3/22/2010 to 3/25/2010
Santa Clara, Calif.
The Eclipse Foundation

DevConnections
4/12/2010 to 4/14/2010
Las Vegas
Penton Media

MySQL Conf. and Expo
4/12/2010 to 4/15/2010
Santa Clara, Calif.
O'Reilly Media

High Performance Computing Linux Financial Markets
4/19/2010
New York City
Flagg Management

Informix User Conf.
4/25/2010 to 4/28/2010
Overland Park, Kans.
IIUG