ODCA: Enterprise Cloud Adoption Accelerating

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The Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) says its members are deploying cloud computing technologies more quickly than initially anticipated, reflecting growing confidence in cloud adoption in the enterprise. The group also said that HP and CA Technologies had joined the group, which also announced collaborations with the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) and Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF).

The Open Data Center Alliance, which is now comprised of more than 300 companies, and aims to provide a unified customer vision for long-term data center requirements. The group's members will triple cloud deployment in the next 2 years according to a report published yesterday. This rate of adoption is five times faster than market forecasts from research firms like IDC. ODCA officials said the results reflect growing member confidence in delivery of industry standard cloud solutions that align with top customer requirements outlined by the organization earlier this year.

Rapid Progress on Standards

“The ODCA membership comprises some of the largest adopters of cloud computing across the globe. Today’s news illustrates how rapidly our membership is implementing cloud in internal environments and with service providers,” said ODCA Board of Directors Chairperson Marvin Wheeler. “We’re delighted by the rapid progress to set standards for cloud security and management, and collaboration with data center industry leaders to deliver open, interoperable cloud solutions.”

Additional insights from the report include:

With the inclusion of HP and CA Technologies, the alliance said it now includes companies that represent more than 90 percent of virtualization software, two thirds of server hardware, and the majority of data center storage, networking and management market leaders.

Collaborations with CSA, DMTF

The collaborations with the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) and Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) reflect the latest efforts by the ODCA to develop industry standards for the delivery of open cloud solutions. The DMTF is an industry group that creates standards that promote multi-vendor interoperability of IT systems, while the Cloud Security Alliance promotes best practices in securing cloud environments and educating users on security.

The collaborative work between ODCA and DMTF will focus on transparent management of virtual machines regardless of virtual machine manager or data center location and is expected to create a simplified path to cloud workload migration.

"Transparent oversight to include security, financials, and performance of cloud workloads across a federated cloud environment is critical to broad adoption of cloud computing," said Curt Aubley, Lockheed Martin vice president and chief technology officer for Cyber Security & NexGen Innovation. "Working with DMTF enables our members to work hand in hand with some of the world’s experts in data center management. DMTF and industry wide collaboration will accelerate industry delivery of solutions that meet customer requirements and open up enormous opportunities for operational efficiency for IT organizations to deliver business outcomes for success."

The ODCA and Cloud Security Alliance collaboration will focus on aligning ODCA's Cloud Service Provider Assurance and Monitoring requirements with CSA best practices and collaborate on cloud security certification training and testing. Initial results from the collaboration are targeted for the first half of 2012.

"As cloud adoption continues at a rapid pace, we welcome this alignment of ODCA’s customer definitions with our best-practices," said Jim Reavis, co-founder and Executive Director of the CSA. "In addition, we believe certification is a crucial step in growing awareness and implementation of these best-practices among organizations. We are very pleased that ODCA members will be participating in our CCSK certification program, driving deeper understanding and adoption of these best-practices within their organizations."

Photo by el diablo robotico (Jeffrey Bell) via Flickr.