Open Data Center Alliance Issues Cloud Guidance

The Open Data Center Alliance has produced its first set of “requirements” for the cloud computing industry, hoping to influence technology developers and service providers on the direction of cloud platform and service development.

The alliance is a consortium of more than 280 IT leaders that collectively spend more than $100 billion on IT infrastructure and services. Its intent is to send a message to the cloud industry on how IT professionals are prioritizing their data center and cloud planning.

The first documents produced from the consortium outline eight “Open Data Center Usage Models” that define IT requirements for cloud adoption, along with an overall “Open Data Center Vision for Cloud Computing.” The documents describe innovations the consortium would like to see in automation, common management and policy and solution transparency—developments the group believes will result in wider deployment of cloud platforms and services. The consortium further notes that adoption of the innovations could reduce annual IT costs by $25 billion within five years and unleash more than $50 billion in cloud services opportunities.

Some of the highlights of the published usage models include proposed standard security levels for cloud services; feature, price and performance comparisons across private and public clouds to make decision-making easier; and interoperability standards.

In a blog post on the organization’s website, Adrian Kunzle, managing director and global head of engineering and architecture for JPMorgan Chase, outlines why IT professionals like him are backing the alliance:

By driving the development of requirements for open, industry-standard solutions, the Open Data Center Usage Models have the potential to greatly accelerate the adoption of cloud services, and the efficiency that these services represent to our organizations is the primary reason why leading IT organizations, including JPMC, came together to form the Alliance last fall. Many companies have been standing on the cloud sidelines, watching and waiting for security and other concerns to be addressed. With the expected industry response to our requirements, we can all now get serious about weaving cloud services into our data center computing plans.

The Open Data Center Alliance is collaborating with a number of standards bodies, including the Cloud Security Association, the Distributed Management Task Force, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards and the TM Forum’s Enterprise Cloud Leadership Council.