Tech Round Up : Enabling Clouds

IT infrastructures in any given organization are heterogeneous, whether its
applications or hardware. Experts say that cloud computing services offer
enormous potential for customers, developers, and the broader information and
communications technology industry. Cloud computing also poses challenges,
because todays IT environment reflects a mix of multiple systems and standards.
Even vendors like Microsoft are advocating open standards in the cloud so that
integration. interoperability would be much easier, and Microsoft has recently
announced interoperability as a key feature which will enable customers to
integrate smoothly on its platform on the cloud. Players like salesforce.com are
also advocating interoperability on the cloud to make the user experience rich
and without any hassles.

Need For Collaboration

Interoperability on the cloud is dominant right now due to the heterogeneity
of IT assets, a mix of cloud plus on premise IT assets and multiple cloud
providers. So in such a scenario, arriving at a homogenous cloud environment is
very difficult and challenging for any CIO. To create collaborative cloud
environment where multiple service providers exist, and yet can arrive at
seamless application delivery lies in effective interoperability.

Some of the vendor initiatives in this area are expected to set broader
frameworks and standards on interoperability. Take the case of Microsoft which
is working through cloud interoperability businesses and priorities with its
Interoperability Executive Customer Council (IEC) which is composed of
thirty-five CIOs and CTOs from government and leading corporations. They are
helping the company identify the top interoperability challenges that
organizations face, as well as opportunities for interoperability improvements
across Microsoft products and the overall software industry. Microsoft recently
co-founded the Simple Cloud API project with Zend Technologies, IBM, Rackspace,
and others. This project focuses on developing open source cloud
interoperability, allowing developers to write basic cloud applications that
work in all the major cloud platforms.

Whether it is Salesforce, or Microsoft, or Google, or others; there is an
increasing realization that the locked in approach will not augur well for
their clouds to gain market acceptance. So, open standards based on certain
widely accepted interoperability practices is the way forward in the cloud
space. Moreover, organizations like the Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum (CCIF)
are working to bring in a seamless cloud computing experience. The CCIF was
formed in order to enable a global cloud computing ecosystem, whereby
organizations are able to seamlessly work together for the purpose of wider
industry adoption of cloud computing technologies and related services. The key
focus will be placed on the creation of a commonly agreed upon framework that
enables the ability of two or more cloud platforms to exchange information in a
unified manner. Clearly 2010 will act as a spring board to cloud computing in
which many enterprises will actually reap the benefits of the cloud as it
becomes more practical.

Shrikanth G

shrikanthg@cybermedia.co.in