Cloud Interoperability and portability still "sci-fi"

According to the US Information systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA), computing the total cost and potential return of IT services is always a challenging task, and cloud computing's emergence has brought a hint of novelty to the process. The analysis of the benefits of cloud computing is bound to involve short-term, long-term prospects and potential terminal costs.

When companies are rushing to make cloud computing decisions, they are often unprepared for the unexpected cost increases caused by changes in regulatory policies that migrate services back to the enterprise data centers, which are being staged in the healthcare industry. In addition, organizations migrate from one platform to another, and they may not understand the costs associated with cloud computing interoperability. Not only is migrating in and out of the cloud environment itself a costly task, but the tasks of re-developing code and data are more likely to generate unpredictable costs.

In the end, specific cloud computing vendors and dedicated service models can lead to potentially fixed costs, and in many cases the cost of moving code and data from one cloud computing service provider to another is often prohibitive.

Most of these problems can be attributed to the limitations of cloud computing services portability and interoperability. These problems are becoming a bottleneck for cloud computing as more and more enterprises consider the cost of migrating cloud computing and get a reasonable return on investment (ROI).

Among them, the core cloud computing interoperability is mainly due to the fact that cloud computing providers have not yet been more focused on languages, data, interfaces, and most of the subsystems that are currently dedicated. So, in this sense, you can easily implement a migration between cloud computing providers without making significant effort and investment should only appear in science fiction.

In addition, the different cloud computing between the realization of the normal operation and collaboration is believed to be just some people's wishful thinking, I beg to disagree. When a cloud computing service provider is unable to provide an interface to collaborate directly with another cloud-computing provider, new cloud users must do their own to achieve data migration or core business process sharing among cloud computing providers.

Of course, standards are still there, and many cloud standards organizations are emerging, such as the green grid, the Cloud Computing Security Alliance, the American Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Distributed Management Task Force, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. However, none of these cloud-computing standards organizations yet has a set of detailed standards for all major cloud computing service providers, and so there is no guarantee that cloud computing interoperability and portability will be achieved. In fact, any talk of cloud computing interoperability and portability standards that has been in place for years is unfounded.

So what is the right time for businesses that lack interoperability and portability standards to guide them? There are several key points that should be considered carefully.

First, interoperability and portability issues are considered based on the cost-benefit analysis of cloud computing migration. As noted in Isaca's report, the cost of migrating resources back to the enterprise or other cloud computing providers may be higher or riskier than many companies think.

Second, choose a cloud provider that can provide you with the best portability and interoperability features. While they may not provide a perfect world, many cloud service providers are trying to understand the needs of their users to implement platform migration tasks, including better services, language support, and data compatibility. However, make sure that you can provide evidence for your point of view (i.e., for conceptual validation) to help determine the current interoperability and portability realities before migrating.

Finally, do not reject cloud migration for fear of risk or problems. Cloud computing standards may not be available anytime soon, so don't wait there. Cloud computing providers will only achieve better portability and interoperability. If that is your main concern now, keep in mind that the potential ROI will become more and more clear in the future.

TechTarget Chinese original content, original link: http://www.searchcloudcomputing.com.cn/showcontent_65556.htm

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)