Subscribe to the Data Center Knowledge Newsletter
Get analysis and expert insight on the latest in data center business and technology delivered to your inbox daily.
Open Cloud Manifesto Unveils Backers
The Open Cloud Manifesto has been released, with support from IBM, Cisco (CSCO), Sun Microsystems (JAVA), Rackspace (RAX) and VMware (VMW).
Rich Miller
March 30, 2009
2 Min Read
.svg?width=1280&auto=webp&quality=95&format=jpg&disable=upscale "DataCenterKnowledge")
clouds
The Open Cloud Manifesto that stirred controversy in the cloud computing blogosphere was officially released late Sunday night. I say "officially" because the full text was published Friday night by Geva Perry. Thus, the only remaining mystery was which companies would be among the endorsers of the document. It's an interesting list, including some big blue-chip companies (IBM, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, AT&T and EMC) as well as some well-known public Internet companies (Rackspace, Akamai, VMware and Red Hat). There's also the expected presence of many cloud service providers, as well as several universities and consortia.Who's missing? The four largest cloud builders: Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Salesforce.
Here's a roundup of commentary from the weekend and reaction to the document's release.
What We Learned from ManifestoGate: James Urquhart sees the manifesto as "an opinion piece, not a standards proposal" and notes that "those who have publicly stated they won't sign have the most to lose." In a follow-up, James says the document orginated with IBM, not Enomaly.
Stacey at GigaOm is underwhelmed by the manifesto's vagueness. "This isn’t the towering rhetoric that will slay an entire proprietary code base," she writes. "Seriously, this is not worth the crazy shenanigans that preceded it."
Silicon Alley Insider has an interview with IBM about its support for the document, and also notes that we don't often see the phrase "manifesto" from Big Blue.
Reuven Cohen said there "seems to have been a miscommunication" with Microsoft about some facets of the document and its release, and says he believes Microsoft is still committed to an open cloud ecosystem.
The controversy is sparking change at the Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum, where Cohen announced that the group would not be a signatory to the manifesto, and called for a governance initiative.
Christofer Hoff notes the significance of the manifesto's provision that "cloud providers must not use their market position to lock customers into their particular platforms and limit their choice of providers." He notes that Amazon, Google and Microsoft all "have notions of what the Cloud ought to be, and how and to what degree it ought to interoperate and with whom."
About the Author
You May Also Like
