Page 117 - How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Cant Afford to Be Left Behind

THE HYBRID CL OUD

A related effort is Simple API for Cloud Application Serv-
ices, another open source project led by Zend Technologies.
It seeks to provide an API for types of service that are found
in the public cloud, then let different clouds support that API
if they so choose. Simple API’s aim is to allow an application
running in an enterprise to invoke, say, a Simple API for stor-

age and receive the storage service available from the cloud
it’s dealing with—if that cloud supports Simple API. That may
be a big if. On the other hand, Simple API may catch on as a
way to level the playing field and give newcomers a shot at at-
tracting business from emerging private clouds. Simple API
already works across the Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network,
a public cloud storage provider, and Amazon’s S3. Nirvanix

supports Simple API for storage. Amazon doesn’t, but S3 is ac-
cessible anyway, because the Eucalyptus API for S3 is publicly
available.
It’s still very early in the game, but these open source and
commercial initiatives show how private clouds may soon be
built and find the means to synchronize their operations with
public clouds. Commercial products probably aren’t far be-
hind the open source examples. In some cases, front-end
management services, such as Skytap and RightScale, already

accept and manage an enterprise’s virtual workloads for the
cloud, even if they are generated by different hypervisors.
They or companies like them may extend that ability and start
navigating the manmade barriers between private cloud op-
erations and the public cloud.

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