Is Cloud Interoperability a Myth?

Review: Executive’s Guide to Cloud Computing by Eric Marks and Bob Lozano

By G C Network | January 26, 2010

Recently, I had the privilege of reviewing an advance copy of Executive’s Guide to Cloud Computing by Eric Marks and Bob Lozano. Available now for pre-order on Amazon, this guide is a…

DoD Cloud Computing Session at 5th International Cloud Expo

By G C Network | January 22, 2010

I’m happy to announce that I will be presenting on DoD Cloud Computing Advances at the 5th International Cloud Expo, April 19-21, 2010 at the Javits Convention Center in New…

InformationWeek Prediction: Cloud Computing for Classified Software

By G C Network | January 20, 2010

Yes, I know you’re sick of all the predictions, but I just can’t resist pointing you to Nick Hoover’s “5 Predictions For Government IT in 2010“. In summary: 1. Cybersecurity…

“Shaping Government Clouds” Just Released

By G C Network | January 12, 2010

As part of the On The Frontlines series, Trezza Media Group has just released it latest on-line electronic magazine. “Shaping Government Clouds” includes: Pete Tseronis, Chairman of the Federal Cloud…

Fed Tech Bisnow: If Nostradamus Did RFPs?

By G C Network | January 6, 2010

Nostradamus may no longer be with us, but check out the “beltway” predictions from Tech Bisnow! “Two hot trends almost all mentioned: early uptick on M&A and cloud computing ubiquity”…

Navy CANES and Cloud Computing

By G C Network | January 4, 2010

During the first quarter of 2010, the Navy is expected to make the first selection for the Consolidated Afloat Network Enterprise System (CANES). CANES is just one component of the…

GovCloud, “Cloud Musings” rated “Influential” by Topsy

By G C Network | January 3, 2010

Log in with Twitter A search engine powered by tweets My sincere appreciation and thanks goes out to Topsy for rating my tweets as “Influential”! Topsy is a new kind…

Jill Tummler Singer Appointed NRO CIO

By G C Network | January 1, 2010

Effective January 1, 2010, Jill Tummler Singer will take the reigns as CIO for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). As the CIA Deputy CIO, Ms Tummler has been a proponent…

Most Influential Cloud Bloggers for 2009

By G C Network | January 1, 2010

Thank you Ulitzer and SYS-CON Media for naming me to your list of the most influential cloud computing bloggers for 2009. My hearty congratulations go out to the other bloggers…

2009: The Government Discovers Cloud Computing

By G C Network | December 23, 2009

2009 was truly a watershed year for Federal information technology professionals. After inaugurating the first Cyber-President we saw the appointment of our first Federal CIO and the rapid adoption of…

Photo credit: Shutterstock
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.

Cloud Musings

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS – © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2016)

Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson
Posted in

G C Network