Page 145 - How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Cant Afford to Be Left Behind

O VERCOMING RESISTANCE T O THE CL OUD

Another group, the Open Grid Forum, debates proposed
standards for managing large clusters known as grids and
teams up with the DMTF, the Cloud Security Alliance, the Stor-
age Networking Industry Association, and the Open Cloud
Consortium to discuss standards for cloud computing. Many
cloud vendors and a few cloud users belong to these groups.

“Fostering trust in cloud computing services is a key criteria for
enabling its growth,” said Jim Reavis, cofounder of the Cloud
Security Alliance. This is true, but unless these groups enlist
the support of the market leaders, they will end up talking to
one another as cloud customers march off to one vendor or
another’s proprietary drum. Too often, the open standards
bodies consist of the vendors who didn’t lead in a technology

innovation but want a piece of the action. Open standards give
them entrée to the market and allow them to invest in prod-
ucts that interact with those of the market leader, if they can
get that leader to follow the standard.
Thus, Simple API, a potentially valuable approach to cross-
cloud computing, is supported not only by little Zend Tech-
nologies, but also by IBM and Microsoft. The party that is
missing among these backers is Amazon Web Services, which
is by far the dominant supplier of public cloud infrastructure.

The cloud customer needs to remain wary, shopping around,
accepting some proprietary control when necessary to engage
to the degree he wants to in cloud computing. But customers
should never lose their willingness to fight lock-in.
Cloud suppliers themselves rely on the Internet, built on
open standards such as Berkeley Internet Name Domain

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