ODCA Publishes Comprehensive View of IaaS Models

The Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) has collaborated with the TM Forum to publish  a suite of documents outlining requirements for Compute Infrastructure as a Service (CIaaS) that aim to simplify cloud adoption by large enterprises.

The two groups worked together to publish a joint statement that summarizes cloud services requirements and a CIaaS master usage model. The usage model includes a common framework around which CIaaS can be defined, provisioned, monitored and managed. It outlines a common set of principles, metrics and architectural frameworks to deliver consistent capabilities, service levels and attributes across multiple providers, while still allowing individual providers to innovate and differentiate their services, and deliver more stringent security and management requirements than are available in today's public clouds. The TM Forum's Enterprise Cloud Leadership Council offers requirements for enterprise-grade CLaaS.

"The collaboration between TM Forum and the ODCA provides a comprehensive IT view on enterprise-grade CIaaS requirements and incorporates insight from some of cloud computing's earliest adopters, many of which are TM Forum members," said Dr. Robert Cohen, Director of the Enterprise Cloud Leadership Council, TM Forum. "Both service providers and cloud infrastructure vendors are looking to the cloud to help them meet demand for digital-based services. The requirements for cloud services included in this joint work reflect both of our organizations' vision for a robust, open and vibrant cloud marketplace."

IaaS Usage Models

The ODCA also released three master usage models, integrating requirements from the Alliance's wealth of publications to help simplify provider delivery of cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solutions. These models address security, management and interoperability and are designed to deliver a comprehensive blueprint for cloud service delivery.

"Adoption of IaaS solutions is a priority for a large portion of ODCA members. Comprehensive requirements for CIaaS will assist many companies as they source services that are enterprise ready, and help remove obstacles for service procurement," said Mario Müller, Open Data Center Alliance chairman, and vice president of IT infrastructure at BMW. "The consolidated input of members, providers and standards organizations has driven the creation of a series of master usage models that our enterprise members can use to guide IT planning, and our provider members can follow to deliver services to the market. This will help ensure that individual cloud offerings will work in harmony, across deployments and independent of provider, and ultimately increase the confidence of business decision makers and IT organizations."

The three master usage models focus on CIaaS, the requirements to orchestrate the service and acquiring the service through a commercial framework. The CLaaS model enables a clear path to delivery of CIaaS solutions that meet enterprise class requirements, helping to remove obstacles to broad IT adoption. Service Orchestration is defined as a standard process or service integration which can be used as a reference model for improving interoperability between cloud providers and subscribers. The commercial framework is a master services agreement between the provider and the consumer can take several months to negotiate.