The last several days has seen two standardization-related events that I think are worth of note. Standardization, of course, is a critical element to creating fluid markets for compute, development, and application services in the cloud. There are several efforts already under way, including the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) Open Cloud Standards Incubator, the Open Grid Forum’s Open Cloud Computing Interface working group, and the Storage Network Industry Association Cloud Storage Technical Work Group. A great resource to see the spectrum of cloud standards activity can be found at the OMG’s cloud-standards.orgwiki.
The standardization effort that was officially announced this week is already listed on that wiki: the Open Group Cloud Work Group. In a press release, The Open Group, described the group’s charter:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-19413_3-10313404-240.html
let’s take the capabilities of something like SCAP and embed a standardized and open API layer into each IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS offering (see the API blocks in the diagram below) to provide not only a standardized way of scanning for network vulnerabilities, but also configuration management, asset management, patch remediation, compliance, etc.