Comments on ElasticVapor :: Life in the Cloud: Do Customers Really Care About Cloud API's?

I suppose vendors and commentators look at the dat...

2010-07-20T09:53:39.621-04:00

I suppose vendors and commentators look at the database market (where SQL is standard), Email servers (SMTP standard), Unix (various shell command standards) and think when there is a cloud standard then the market will really take off!! I don't buy that, I think things will really take off when we get Platform as a Service (PaaS) standard APIs. Developers want high-level controls that can boost their productivity. The current cloud APIs are too low level. We just need to get through this Infrastructure as a Service phase and commoditize it before moving on to the real productivity boost of Platform as a Service standards.

Neill Turner
http://www.elastdream.com

Your article points out some of the key problems w...

2010-07-11T03:50:37.496-04:00

Your article points out some of the key problems with trying to create a cloud computing 'standard' API. The actual notion that a standard can exist assumes a common feature set and approach to cloud computing. Especially at the IaaS level, this is highly problematic. Amazon have taken one approach but it is not necessarily the optimal one. Also, by adopting a standard you exclude and limit innovation in a very real way. Standards are attractive but the simple fact is they protect incumbents and discourage real innovation. At such an early stage in the development of infrastructure-as-a-service is that what we really want?

There are many examples of very similar areas which don't have standards, web hosting being a very obvious one! In terms of just some of the major limitations that adopting Amazon's API would entail they include:
- fixed instant sizes as defined by Amazon (an arbitrary restriction)
- no coverage of other account actions such as billing etc.
- no persistent servers (again completely possible and available today)
- no data encryption options
- restrictions on networking and software to match Amazon

These are just a few, there are a great deal more. The reality is that the real lock-in in clouds comes from lack of access to data and system lock-in through deliberately proprietary architecture. The time it takes to re-code some scripts to fit a new API is negligible compared with dealing with these two forms of lock-in.

In short I believe the industry and press are looking in the wrong direction with regards to trying to reduce friction between cloud providers. People should be concentrating on the ease with which data can be inputted and outputted from clouds and also highlighting when vendors deliberately adopt new arbitrary proprietary behaviours and standards when existing well adopted standards already exist. Addressing these two points can have a very real impact on the ability of customers to switch between clouds.

Kind regards,

Robert
Co-Founder
CloudSigma
CloudSigma.com

When reading her post (or any post elevating a spe...

2010-07-09T16:46:38.923-04:00

When reading her post (or any post elevating a specific vendors tools), one can easily be distracted by your love or dislike for the vendor.

What I took away from her post was that we need a standard. If we used Amazon as a baseline establishing the standard, we could move forward quickly.

I am very concerned with the big players establishing the standards without true consensus from all players in an industry.

I'm not as concerned with the API as having flexibility to just change an endpoint address and have my data synced to another cloud storage provider in another part of the world without recoding the API.

I would hope that API standards for server instances could lead to machine image portability in the same way. If I wanted my AMI that I run in USWest, USEast, and EU to run in South America....with push of button I could push AMI to 3rd party and fire up instance.

Seems like with standards we could create more of a commodity exchange for compute power, storage etc easier as well.

I read her post more about quickly getting to a standard language for cloud computing vs. Amazon is and always will be standard. Or they should lead the effort because they are the leader.

And I would hope like any other standard there are ways to extend beyond the core definition.