Movement on Cloud Standards

One of the issues that gives new cloud users pause is the lack of standards across different vendors. An application developed for Amazon may be very difficult to move to Rackspace. In practice, applications developed on top of platforms like the Apache Web Server, Tomcat, MySQL may not be as difficult to move as some suggest, but any progress on standards will make it easier and relieve some of the concern about vendor lock-in.

Barb Darrow, writing for Gigacom reports on the current state of standards development:

A cadre of tech companies led by IBM, and including CA Technologies, Cisco, Citrix, EMC, NetApp, Red Hat, and SAP – is throwing its weight behind a proposed standard to ensure applications can move between clouds.

The group, under the auspices of the venerable OASIS standards body (responsible for such standards as WS-Security and the OpenDocument Format), takes aim at one of the chief concerns enterprises have about cloud computing: a fear that a given cloud is like a roach motel in that they can check their apps in, but checking them out may be a whole other matter.

Unfortunately, as she goes on to report, Amazon, Rackspace and Microsoft are not on the list. Nevertheless, this group should help move the dialogue forward and perhaps get the major players to support the standards development process.