
By William Vambenepe | Article Rating: |
|
August 26, 2008 06:53 AM EDT | Reads: |
29,008 |
3Tera’s Bert Armijo recently called for the standardization of utility/cloud computing. He named it “Open Cloud” and it would "allow a company’s IT systems to be shared between different cloud computing services and moved freely between them." I applaud Bert’s efforts but I couldn’t sleep well at night if I didn’t also warn him that “there be dragons.”
{This post appeared originally here and is republished in full with the kind permission of the author]
This Forbes article (via John) channeled Bert's call. Bert talked a bit more about it on his blog and, while he doesn’t reference the Forbes interview (too modest?), he pointed to Cloudscape as the vision.
A few thoughts on all this:
- No offense to Forbes but I wouldn’t read too much into the article. Being Forbes, they get quotes from a list of well-known people/companies (Google and Amazon spokespeople, Forrester analyst, Nick Carr). But these quotes all address the generic idea of utility computing standards, not the specifics of Bert’s project.
- Saying that “several small cloud-computing firms including Elastra and Rightscale are already on board with 3Tera’s standards group” is ambiguous. Are they on-board with specific goals and a candidate specification? Or are they on board with the general idea that it might be time to talk about some kind of standard in the general area of utility computing?
- IEEE and W3C are listed as possible hosts for the effort, but they don’t seem like a very good match for this area. I would have thought of DMTF, OASIS or even OGF first. On the face of it, DMTF might be the best place but I fear that companies like 3Tera, Rightscale and Elastra would be eaten alive by the board member companies there. It would be almost impossible for them to drive their vision to completion, unlike what they can do in an OASIS working group.
- A new consortium might be an option, but a risky and expensive one. I have sometimes wondered (after seeing sad episodes of well-meaning and capable start-ups being ripped apart by entrenched large vendors in standards groups) why VCs don’t play a more active role in standards. Standards sound like the kind of thing VCs should be helping their companies with. VC firms are pretty used to working together, jointly investing in companies. Creating a new standard consortium might be too hard for 3Tera, but if the VCs behind 3Tera, Elastra and Rightscale got together and looked at the utility computing companies in their portfolios, it might make sense to join forces on some well-scoped standardization effort that may not otherwise be given a chance in existing groups.
- I hope Bert will look into the history of DCML, a similar effort (it was about data center automation, which utility computing is not that far from once you peel away the glossy pictures) spearheaded by a few best-of-bread companies but ignored by the big boys. It didn’t really take off. If it had, utility computing standards might now be built as an update/extension of that specification. Of course DCML started as a new consortium and ended as an OASIS “member section” (a glorified working group), so this puts a grain of salt on my “create a new consortium and/or OASIS group” suggestion above.
- The effort can’t afford to be disconnected from other standards in the virtualization and IT management domains. How does the effort relate to OVF? To WS-Management? To existing modeling frameworks? That’s the main draw towards DMTF as a host.
- What’s the open source side of this effort? As John mentions during the latest Redmonk/Willis IT management podcast (starting around minute 24), there needs to a open source side to this. Actually, John thinks all you need is the open source side. Coté brings up Eucalyptus. BTW, if you want an existing combination of standards and open source, have a look at CDDLM (standard) and SmartFrog (implementation, now with EC2/S3 deployment)
- There seems to be some solid technical raw material to start from. 3Tera’s ADL, combined with Elastra’s ECML/EDML presumably capture a fair amount of field expertise already. But when you think of them as a starting point to standardization, the mindset needs to switch from “what does my product need to work” to “what will the market adopt that also helps my product to work”.
- One big question (at least from my perspective) is that of the line between infrastructure and applications. Call me biased, but I think this effort should focus on the infrastructure layer. And provide hooks to allow application-level automation to drive it.
- The other question is with regards to the management aspect of the resulting system and the role management plays in whatever standard specification comes out of Bert’s effort.
Bottom line: I applaud Bert’s efforts but I couldn’t sleep well tonight if I didn’t also warn him that “there be dragons”.
And for those who haven’t seen it yet, here is a very good document on the topic (but it is focused on big vendors, not on how smaller companies can play the standards game).
{This post appeared originally here and is republished in full with the kind permission of the author]
Published August 26, 2008 Reads 29,008
Copyright © 2008 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.
- Getting Ready for the Cloud
- Mosso Co-Founder Jonathan Bryce to Present at SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Expo
- Cloud Computing vs. Elastic Cloud: What's the Difference?
- Cloud Computing Journal: Current Themes & Topics
- Twenty-One Experts Define Cloud Computing
- The Three Levels of Cloud Computing
- Understanding "Clouded" Terms of Cloud Computing
- Cloud Computing Expo: Introducing the Cloud Pyramid
More Stories By William Vambenepe
William Vambenepe is an Architect at Oracle Corp. He was formerly an HP Distinguished Technologist in the Office of the CTO of the Management Software Business where he was one of the architects of the technical strategy for HP OpenView.
![]() Apr. 19, 2018 11:00 AM EDT Reads: 6,997 |
By Elizabeth White Apr. 19, 2018 09:45 AM EDT Reads: 4,121 |
By Charles Araujo ![]() Apr. 19, 2018 09:00 AM EDT Reads: 3,165 |
By Liz McMillan ![]() Apr. 19, 2018 08:15 AM EDT Reads: 7,831 |
Accelerate Development with @Opsani_ | @DevOpsSummit #Serverless #DevOps #Docker #ContinuousDelivery By Liz McMillan ![]() Apr. 19, 2018 07:00 AM EDT Reads: 3,691 |
By Ed Witkovic ![]() Apr. 19, 2018 06:00 AM EDT Reads: 4,493 |
By Pat Romanski ![]() Apr. 19, 2018 03:15 AM EDT Reads: 7,070 |
By Elizabeth White ![]() Apr. 19, 2018 02:45 AM EDT Reads: 4,699 |
By Liz McMillan Apr. 19, 2018 01:45 AM EDT Reads: 2,632 |
By Stackify Blog ![]() Apr. 19, 2018 01:15 AM EDT Reads: 7,825 |
By Yeshim Deniz ![]() Apr. 19, 2018 01:00 AM EDT Reads: 6,698 |
By Pat Romanski ![]() Apr. 19, 2018 12:45 AM EDT Reads: 3,477 |
By Pat Romanski ![]() Apr. 18, 2018 06:30 PM EDT Reads: 4,676 |
By Liz McMillan ![]() Apr. 18, 2018 04:45 PM EDT Reads: 13,353 |
By Pat Romanski Apr. 18, 2018 02:00 PM EDT Reads: 2,146 |
By Yeshim Deniz ![]() Apr. 18, 2018 10:00 AM EDT Reads: 1,602 |
By Elizabeth White ![]() Apr. 18, 2018 06:30 AM EDT Reads: 1,804 |
By Liz McMillan ![]() Apr. 17, 2018 10:45 PM EDT Reads: 3,530 |
By Elizabeth White ![]() Apr. 16, 2018 10:45 PM EDT Reads: 4,780 |
By Dana Gardner ![]() Apr. 15, 2018 01:30 AM EDT Reads: 5,195 |