Friday, August 07, 2009

Open Clouds

Whilst there are many organisations attempting to define standards for the cloud, my view has always been that these standards will emerge through the marketplace. What is critically important is to the protect the notion of what is and what isn't an open cloud. This is why I actively support the Open Cloud Initiative (OCI) which was founded by Sam Johnston.

The OCI doesn't try to tell you what cloud computing is or isn't, it doesn't even try to tell you what is an open cloud or not. What the OCI does is state, this is our definition of an open cloud (of which there are various forms) and here are the trademarks which you may use to identify your cloud with one of our definitions. He is not saying you must follow our standards or the whims of a committee but instead, he provides a means for end-users to recognise a cloud as being truly open.

The market will decide if Sam's approach will be a success or not but I fully support him in this action.