Is Cloud Interoperability a Myth?

Lynn DeCourcey Showcased in ExecutiveBiz

By G C Network | August 9, 2012

Kudos to my colleague Lynn DeCourcey for her recent interview on  ExecutiveBiz.com! Lynn is NJVC vice president and general manager, cyber security. She oversees all aspects of the company’s cyber…

BISNOW Data Center Event Highlight’s Cloud

By G C Network | July 28, 2012

A big thank you to BISNOW and my fellow panel members for an outstanding discussion and very informative event, last week’s Data Center Investment Conference and Expo. The federal marketplace…

GSA Seeks Cloud Brokerage Information

By G C Network | July 18, 2012

GSA is using the RFI process to collect information about alternative models and/or solutions for future cloud acquisition vehicles and processes that further these goals. One emerging concept in cloud…

DoD Cloud Computing Strategy

By G C Network | July 15, 2012

The DoD recently released the department’s formal cloud computing strategy. DoD Cloud Computing Strategy View more documents from Kevin Jackson. In the forward, DoD CIO Teresa Takai said that: “The…

FedRAMP PMO Releases First Set of 3PAOs

By G C Network | May 14, 2012

Late today the FedRAMP Program Management Office released the first list of certified Third Party Assessment Organizations (3PAOs). These companies are accredited to perform initial and periodic assessment of cloud…

FedRAMP Releases Updated Security Assessment Plan Templates

By G C Network | May 8, 2012

Last week the GSA FedRAMP Program Office released the latest version of the cloud computing Security Assessment Plan (SAR) template.  This document is the most recent step toward the Federal…

NJVC® and Gravitant® Announce New Strategic Alliance: Partnership to Benefit Federal Agencies with Powerful Provision and Management of Cloud Services that Unify Multiple Providers

By G C Network | April 4, 2012

Vienna, Va., April 4, 2012 — NJVC®, one of the largest information technology solutions providers supporting the U.S. Department of Defense, and Gravitant®, a provider of cloud brokerage and management…

NJVC® VP and GM, Cloud Services, Kevin L. Jackson to Speak on Cloud Security at 2012 Emerging Threats and Cyber Defense Symposium

By G C Network | March 18, 2012

Vienna, Va., March 15, 2012 — NJVC®, one of the largest information technology solutions (IT) providers supporting the U.S. Department of Defense, is pleased to announce that Kevin L. Jackson,…

NJVC’s Kevin L. Jackson Co-Authors INSA White Paper on Cloud Computing for the Intelligence Community

By G C Network | March 13, 2012

Findings Reflect Insight from More than 50 Cloud Thought Leaders   VIENNA, Va.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–NJVC®, one of the largest information technology solutions (IT) providers supporting the U.S. Department of Defense, announces…

INSA Study on Cloud Computing in the Intelligence Community: Rollout 13 March 2012 | SYS-CON MEDIA

By G C Network | March 10, 2012

(Originally posted by Bob Gourley at CTOvision)         Over the last year I’ve had the pleasure of serving with a team of volunteers from the Intelligence and National Security Alliance…

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As the industry matures, cloud computing will increasingly rely on interoperability in order to grow and deliver more value to industry. Assuming this is a fact, what does it mean when eighteen major OpenStack vendors come together to work through the challenges involved with achieving enterprise interoperability? Events at the OpenStack Summit in Barcelona helped provide a window into the promise of tomorrow’s interoperable environment.
In cloud computing, interoperability generally refers to the ability of service models from different cloud service providers to work together. Specifically:
·         Infrastructure-as-a-service
o   Access Mechanism – defines how a service in cloud may be accessed by users and/or software developers,
o   Virtual Resources – service delivery as a complete software stack of installing a virtual machine,
o   Network – addressing and API,
o   Storage – management and organization of storage,
o   Security – authentication, authorization, user accounts and encryption,
o   Service-Level Agreement – architecture format, monitoring,
·         Platform-as-a-Service
o   The exchange of data and services among different platforms hosted on different infrastructures on cloud;
o   Data compatibility among different platforms,
o   Portability between platforms
o   Data transfer procedures (i.e. packing, copying, instantiating, installing, deployment and customization)
·         Software-as-a-Service
o   Interoperability among applications in the same cloud,
o   Data exchange and operation calls in applications on different cloud-computing environments
o   Software programs that are distributed in different cloud environments and integrate data and applications in cloud in a unified way, and
o   Migration of applications from one cloud environment to another
If this isn’t enough of a challenge, one would also need to specifically address the many embedded and overriding interoperability aspects, including:
·         Technical interoperability – development of standards of communication, transport and representation;
·         Semantic interoperability – the use of various different terms to describe similar concepts may cause problems in communication, execution of programs and data transfers;
·         Political/Human interoperability – the decision to make resources widely available has implications for organizations, their employees and end-users;
·         Interoperability of communities or societies – there is an increasing need to require access to information from a wide range of sources and communities; and
·         International interoperability – in international matters, there are variations in standard, communication problems, language barriers, differences in communication styles, and a lack of common basis.
 As one may imagine, the rapid growth of cloud computing and the global proliferation of service providers has created an intractable many-to-many interoperability quagmire that can never be tamed. Knowing this, the Openstack Interop Challenge looks toward cultivating success by leveraging the open source cloud technology as a common integration layer.  Participants include AT&T, Canonical, Cisco, DreamHost, Deutsche Telekom, Fujitsu, HPE, Huawei, IBM, Intel, Linaro, Mirantis, OSIC, OVH, Rackspace, Red Hat, SUSE and VMware. The goal was to publicly demonstrate how OpenStack delivers on the promise of interoperability across on-premises, public and hybrid cloud deployments.


Boris Renski, co-founder of Mirantis, argues that 
interoperability doesn’t start at the infrastructure layer. 


Although you would expect this strategy would greatly simplify the integration challenge, contrarian views are out there.  One of the most vocal is Boris Renski, co-founder of Mirantis and member of the OpenStack board of directors. He believes interoperability does not necessarily start at the IaaS layer. He believes that applications can be built to be interoperable across different infrastructure platform. Quoting his OpenStack Summit keynote:

“Even across Mirantis-powered OpenStack clouds like AT&T and the Volkswagen cloud, they are both based on the same distribution, but the underlying reference architectures are dramatically different…Volkswagen can’t throw something at AT&T and it will just work.”

In this post I’m happy to report though that the participating OpenStack cloud vendors were able to announce a successful completion of the interoperability challenge. While this success is clearly a baby step on the long and treacherous road to cloud interoperability, it is worth noting because this modest achievement also led to the creation of automated tools for the deployment of applications across a variety of OpenStack environments.The effort also generated significant collateral on cloud computing interoperability best practices and is expected to drive even further interoperability collaboration across the Openstack community.


This post was brought to you by IBM Global Technology Services. For more content like this, visit Point B and Beyond.

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