VMWare's Vcloud API still hazy, Ambitions are clear
According to my source, the Vcloud API will be released "publicly very shortly". Funny that same source said that back in November as well.
Actually what I found most was the quote VMware's Dan Chu, vice president of emerging products and markets made had the Network World website in the post he outlines "that one of the drivers for the API was the lack of standardisation for cloud computing interoperability." He goes on to say that the company was looking to build on its work with Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) on the open virtualisation format (OVF). "The industry needs to take a big step towards interoperability. We hope to work with the appropriate bodies to move forward to establish a common standard."
As for being interoperable, VMware is saying that its various management tools will only work on top of the VMware hypervisor. In other words, physical servers and servers virtualised by Microsoft, Citrix or any other vendor will not be compatible with the Vcloud initiative. Summarized, we're interoperable as long as it's VMWare.
According to the Network World website, VMware has already submitted a draft of its VMware vCloud API to enable consistent mobility, provisioning, management, and service assurance of applications running in internal and external clouds." (What!? Did I miss something here?)
What concerns me about this is that Winston Bumpus is both President of the DMTF as well as Director of Standards Architecture at VMware. This would seem to mean that Bumpus has the ability to submit draft API specifications directly to the DMTF without any outside public review. He in effect has the ability to to define cloud standards directly thus giving VMware a "somewhat" unfair advantage in terms of defining the future direction for standards compliant cloud platforms, VMWare based or otherwise. If the DMTF accepts the Vcloud API specification, that would mean VMware essentially owns the cloud API standard. A standard that no one other then a select group of VMWare's partners has ever actual had a chance to review.
I'll keep you updated as more details emerge.
Labels: interoperability, Standardization, vmware
posted by enomaly
at
11:35 AM
1 Comments :
It's quite an overstatement to say that Winston "in effect has the ability to to define cloud standards directly". As much as I like to criticize the DMTF at times, there is process involved and it ensures some level of fairness. Clearly, board-level companies have a lot more control. And among them, those holding key positions (including, but not limited to Winston) have even more. But still, it's not a banana republic.
It's not a matter of one person, but it's true that both WS-Management and OVF (submissions that came with strong backing from board-level companies and top-level officers) seem to do very well in DMTF. So you can reasonably expect a Cloud spec with similar backing to find a cozy home there.
And clearly VMWare has been very active and proactive in DMTF, as I noted in March and June last year. Interesting times...
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