Vendors Outline API Standard for PaaS Clouds

In cloud computing news, leading IT companies are set to submit a management specification for platform as a service (PaaS), and Quantum challenges Amazon Glacier with its new Q-Cloud.

Oracle, Rackspace and others propose new Cloud standard

Technology vendors, including Oracle, Rackspace, CloudBees, Cloudsoft Corporation, Huawei, Red Hat, and Software AG, announced Cloud Application Management for Platforms (CAMP), a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) management Application Programming Interface (API) specification. The standard is set to be submitted to OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) for development of an industry standard. The goal is something that has long been a popular request for clouds; portability. The standard hopes to ensure interoperability for deploying and managing applications across cloud environments.

In order to standardize a PaaS management interface, CAMP hopes to provide a common basis for developing multi-cloud management tools as well as offering cloud providers and consumers a REST-based approach to application management. It will have a common development vocabulary and API that can be portable across clouds and be compatible with PaaS-aware and PaaS-unaware application development environments, both offline and in the cloud. Common use cases for CAMP include moving an on-premise application to the cloud (private or public) as well as redeployment of such applications across cloud platforms from multiple vendors.

"Rackspace wants clouds to be open to give customers freedom and choice," said Adrian Otto, senior technology strategist, Rackspace. "CAMP offers a way to enable application portability between public and private clouds, and even between cloud service providers offering similar Platform-as-a-Service solutions."

"The interoperability between platform clouds that CAMP offers means that a CAMP client can target multiple clouds with a single common interface," wrote Mark Carlson, Oracle's Principal Cloud Strategist, in a blog post. "Applications can even be spread across multiple platform clouds and then managed without needing to create a specialized adapter to manage the components running in each cloud."

Quantum launches Q-Cloud

Quantum launched Q-Cloud, a new cloud-based backup and disaster recovery (DR) subscription service, to provide business-class data protection at a consumer cloud storage price. It will backup both physical and virtual infrastructures for capacities ranging from 1 TB up to 1 PB of protected data, for as little as 1 cent/GB, per month.

Q-Cloud uses Quantum's DXi-Series data protection and its vmPRO virtual machine protection capabilities both onsite and in the cloud. Multi-site enterprises using Q-Cloud can economically replicate directly from edge to cloud, eliminating the use of primary resources for backup and DR. The DXi appliances enable Q-Cloud to work with existing backup applications, including Backup Exec, CommVault, Data Protector, NetBackup, vRanger, Tivoli Storage Manager and Veeam. Subscription pricing enables a "pay as you grow" approach to data protection, allowing customers to purchase only the storage capacity they need and no more.

"Quantum has focused on enabling better backups through deduplication methodologies, as well as virtualization-optimized data protection mechanisms," said Jason Buffington, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. "For DXi owners, Q-Cloud has the potential to radically disrupt the presumed economics of cloud-based backup and disaster-recovery -- making BaaS and DRaaS viable options for folks who might have otherwise thought it unachievable."

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