Cloud fight

Nothing signals that a technology has arrived better than a fight over standards.  The slug-fest that recently broke out over the “Open Cloud Manifesto” shows that the cloud computing concept is no longer simply hazy vapour-ware.

Cloud computing refers to the trend where computing power is becoming a utility that is generated remotely in the in the Internet’s vast backbone infrastructure (”the cloud”) and delivered as a service through the web.  The so-called Open Cloud Manifesto essentially calls on the major IT vendors to avoid erecting proprietary fences for the cloud platforms they are developing.  The hope is that with open standards, customers can easily port data, applications and services between different cloud platforms.

While few would argue against the benefits of such open standards, there is certainly going to be a bitter fight over exactly whose standards and conventions to adopt before the dust settles.  This a par for the course for any emerging technology.

Currently, IBM, SAP and Cisco appear to be driving forces behind the manifesto – these are services and commodity hardware providers who stand to benefit greatly when cloud computing really does take off.  At this stage however, the real pioneers behind cloud technology are absent from the list.  The likes of Amazon, Google, Salesforce.com and Microsoft are, not surprisingly, more cautious about potentially giving up any competitive advantage they have built up for the sake of altruistic openness.

The current flap is just a minor skirmish.  As cloud computing grows at its current pace, a full-scale standards war could well be on the horizon.

Download the Open Cloud Manifesto Draft 1.0.9 as pdf here.