Explore user expectations for cloud service standards

When cloud services are running smoothly and service level agreements (SLAs) are in place, business parties, businesses, and institutions may want to transfer data from cloud storage to different providers, but find it impossible to do so for some reason. One reason is that the data format required for API calls to store data in the cloud is incompatible with, or not interoperable with, API calls used by different providers to store data in the cloud.

As a result, the business side will be confronted with data transmission failures due to the format of the datastore used by different providers before selecting a provider to provide cloud services. (a way to mitigate damage is to negotiate with providers to support greater flexibility when transferring data to different providers.) This includes changing the code to a provider's cloud service API call. )

Cloud users should get not only interoperable APIs, they need cloud service standards to ensure interoperability for all cloud delivery models:

Infrastructure as a service: a virtual machine hosted by a provider against IaaS is compatible with a virtual computer hosted by another provider for IaaS.

Platform as a service: a platform that works on an IAAS is compatible with a platform that works on another IaaS.

Software as a service: an application developed on a PAAs is capable of working on another compatible PAAs.

To help you start making these decisions, this article lists the expectations that providers or cloud service users should have for interoperability standards. Next, this article delves into the organization that is setting standards for all aspects of the cloud service, allowing you to access the right organizations and use their resources as an interoperability tool, depending on your needs. You may even want to contribute to the evolution of standards in the communities concerned with the development of these standards.

Cloud service users ' expectations

A cloud user (an application, platform, or infrastructure service provider or user) should be able to expect reasonable interoperability in the following areas:

Delivery model interoperability: especially Iaas-to-iaas and Paas-to-paas.

Cloud based interfaces and interactions: for example, interactions between clouds and non-cloud systems.

Service-oriented architecture and other WEB services: support interoperability between cloud systems and SOA reference architectures, infrastructure frameworks, and integration models.

Enterprise IT Management system: let a variety of different IT products perfect integration standards.

Storage: A system for managing data archiving and access; This functionality is critical because some of the data may be resources that support functionality in the cloud application.

Security: Protocols and utilities are used to manage cloud security issues during interoperability, such as Message Queuing, identity and security authentication, and infrastructure topology and application choreography.

Migration: The tools that organizations use to migrate applications (or even the entire IT environment) to the cloud should also be standards-based.

User-facing arbiter: If a very large organization (such as the federal government) that is theoretically controlled by its users wants to establish cloud interoperability standards, can mitigate the pain experienced by some cloud manufacturers in designing (refactoring) the interoperability of their products, as a large market will be forced to accept this standard.

The easiest way to build interoperability is to create, adopt, and improve standards.

Cloud Service Standards Organization

In an attempt to promote cloud service standards, organizations come forward to push or publish standards (approved or draft versions). They are planning to meet the expectations of users in the following areas:

Take the vendor-independent cloud service standards as the primary focus of your organization.

A working organization that focuses on cloud computing industry standards.

Standards for cloud services provided by standard information technology organizations.

Organizations that provide the best practices for providing standard terminology and value for SLAs are meeting customer expectations in order to drive SLA management standardization. They can be viewed as a common supporter of the interests of users and providers.

Organizations focused on open cloud service standards include OpenStack Foundation, open Grid Forum, and the open group.

Standard industry organizations that have established working groups on cloud computing include distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) and Storage receptacle Cato (association). DMTF's Cloud Management Workgroup and SNIA Cloud Storage Technical Group have established standard interfaces for cloud computing.

Standard Information technology organizations that provide approved or operational cloud computing standards include national Cato of Science and Marvell (NIST) and OASIS (from for the advancement of Structured information standards). NIST has released a specific definition of cloud computing, and OASIS is advancing the draft cloud computing standards.

User Initiative organizations that provide best practices for SLA agreements include the TM Forum and Cloud Service customer Council.

The standard terms and values for SLAs are being formed, but they do not exist at this time of writing.

Let's take a closer look at some of these organizations and the tools they provide.

OpenStack Foundation: Let IaaS communicate with each other

Potential and current cloud service users expect an open cloud service standard that allows one IaaS to fully interact with another IaaS hosted by another provider. OpenStack Foundation has taken a forward-looking approach to meeting their expectations.

Let's take a closer look at what OpenStack Foundation is and what they can do to standardize IaaS.

OpenStack Foundation is responsible for overseeing OpenStack's IaaS Cloud Computing project, which integrates code from the Nebula platform of NASA with Rackspace platform. Developers work with cloud computing technologists around the world to create open source cloud computing platforms for public and private clouds. The code revisions for this project were completed by OpenStack Foundation's members, OpenStack Foundation was split up in 2011 by Rackspace. In April 2012, IBM and Red Hat agreed to join the foundation as a Platinum member, meaning they donated 500,000 dollars a year for the next three years. In addition, the two companies will also be involved in modifying software code. Other companies that plan to join or have planned to join Platinum members include At&t, Canonical, HP, Nebula, Rackspace and SUSE.

OpenStack has a modular architecture that contains three components for standardizing IaaS. Each component has a code name.

Computing (Nova): Open source software and standards for automated deployments that implement virtual computing instances on a large scale.

Object Storage (Swift): Provides open source software and standards for large, redundant storage of static objects.

Mirroring Service (Glance): Provides discovery, registration, and delivery services for virtual disk mirroring.

Open Stack Identity Management (Keystone): Provides unified authentication for all OpenStack projects and integrates with existing authentication systems.

User Interface Dashboard (deepwater): Enables administrators and users to access and configure the entire cloud-based resource through the Self-Service portal.

Open Grid Forum: Cloud connections and interactions

Cloud service users expect an open cloud interface, and open Grid Forum (OGF) meets their expectations by publishing cloud interface standards.

OGF is a standard development organization that covers the relevant patterns of grids, clouds, and advanced distributed computing. It proactively approves and publishes the Open Cloud Computing Interface (OCCI) standard, which provides cloud-based interaction specifications. This interface has been used to solve various problems in cloud computing, such as scientific data processing, drug research, cancer research, financial risk analysis, virtualization and product design.

OCCI provides the same protocol and API design component for all types of cloud management tasks. The work was originally intended to create remote administration for IaaS based services. The current version of OCCI also applies to PaaS and SaaS models.

Note that the software used in grid computing requires the ability to divide the program into sections and subcontract these parts to thousands of computers as a large system image. A noticeable problem with the grid is that if the software part of a node fails, other parts of the other node may fail. The precaution to take is to ensure that all parts of the software can fail back from one node to another.

Open Group: Standardize IaaS to support SOA

Cloud service users want IaaS to support Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Open Group is another organization that strives to standardize the IaaS. Open Group publishes three standards to help organizations that are building IaaS products and service-oriented architecture (SOA). These three criteria include:

Service oriented Cloud Computing infrastructure Framework (SOCCI)

Service Oriented Architecture Reference architecture (SOA RA)

Open Group Service Integration Maturity Model (OSIMM)

Socci provides components for the infrastructure to support SOA and cloud planning. IBM is co-chair of the project. Another chairman is served by HP.

SOA RA provides a blueprint for creating and evaluating SOA offerings on IaaS. IBM made an important contribution in the process of writing up to 200 pages of guidelines on this standard.

OSIMM provides a framework for assessing the organization's SOA maturity. IBM has its own maturity models: IBM Service Integration Maturity Model.

Remember, not all IaaS implementations are used to support SOA.

Distributed Management Task Force: from incubator to workgroup

Cloud service users expect open computing standards from industry organizations, such as DMTF. The organization develops, maintains, and improves system management standards in the enterprise IT environment. DMTF helps implement system management interoperability between IT products from different manufacturers or companies.

DMTF's Open Cloud standards incubator focuses on the standardization of interactions between cloud environments by developing cloud management use cases, architectures, and interactions. The work was completed in July 2010. Today, DMTF's cloud standard development work is carried out by Cloud Management Workgroup (CMWG) and Cloud Auditing Data Federation (Workgroup WG).

CMWG Development specification to support interoperability management between service provider requesters, developers, and providers. It publishes the Cloud infrastructure Management Interface (Cimi) as Work-in-progress Draft, which defines the model for managing resources in IaaS. It can be used to create new virtual machines, expand the capacity of machines, and define machine templates through cloud access points.

The open standards developed by the CADF WG are used to summarize cloud audit information and help cloud providers generate and share specific audit events, logs, and reporting information. These reports and logs contain the information needed to categorize label events based on compatibility control domains and frameworks such as ISO 27002, PCI DSS, and COBIT.

Storage Receptacle Industry Association: Always Critical Cloud storage standards

Cloud service users want the technical team to be able to develop cloud interface standards for Izumo storage. One example is the non-profit organization Storage receptacle Industry Association. Since 1997, the organization has been working on storage standards. In the work of developing system standards for cloud storage, SNIA created the Cloud Storage technical Work Group (TWG) in advance. The good news is that it publishes the Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI) standard and extends the standard.

Standard interfaces explain how applications use them to create, retrieve, update, and delete data elements in the cloud provided by each service provider in an API format. This interface helps clients discover the functionality of cloud storage, manage containers and data placed in containers, and set metadata on containers and the data elements they contain.

Management applications can use this interface to manage containers, account numbers, secure access, billing information, and storage accessed through other protocols.

Cloud Storage TWG is about to release an independent extension for the CDMI standard, which adds new functionality to the next version of CDMI (after a successful test of the interoperable implementation).

TWG provides documentation on system-level requirements and attempts to share these documents with other cloud storage standards organizations, in collaboration with the SNIA Strategic Alliances Committee.

From for the advancement of structured information standards: improving cloud security standards

Cloud service users expect open Information technology security standards, including standards for cloud computing. Examples include these standards improved by from for the Advancement of Structured Information (OASIS). OASIS has set up three technical Committees (TC) to prepare the draft cloud safety standards, respectively:

Advanced message Queuing Kyoto (AMQP)

Identity in the Cloud (Idcloud)

Topology and orchestration Specification for Cloud applications (TOSCA)

AMQP TC improves a protocol to help organizations reduce the cost of enterprise middleware software integration through open interoperability. With this protocol, organizations can easily and securely transfer data between applications, such as IBM websphere®mq,mq Series, across the entire organization through distributed cloud computing environments and mobile infrastructures.

The Idcloud TC addresses the security issues associated with identity management in cloud computing. This TC determines the requirements for interoperability in the current identity standard. It performs risk and threat analysis on the collected use cases and provides guidelines for mitigating the impact of vulnerabilities. IBM is one of the members of this Committee.

The goal of the TOSCA TC is to support portable deployments of any compatible cloud, migrate existing applications more smoothly into the cloud, flexible user choices, and dynamic applications from multiple cloud providers. Portability is achieved by supporting the interoperability of the infrastructure cloud services, the relationships between the various parts of the service, and the behavior of these services, such as deployment, patching, and shutdown.

TM Forum: SLA Best Practices for multiple partners

SLA Standard Terms and values that cloud service users and providers expect to be related to quality of service, priority, and responsibility. The TM Forum Cloud & New Services Initiative focuses on how best practices (for topics like service level agreement management) and standards (Frameworx) can be used to further activate the cloud market. TM emphasizes standards as the enabler of open markets.

TM Forum defines an SLA as the expectation of two or more Parties for quality of service, priority, and responsibility. Traditionally, SLAs have been in the form of contracts between service providers and enterprise users, but the ever-expanding value chain of new-generation services has made SLAs the focus of various partners, including:

Service provider to cloud end users

Service provider to manufacturer

Service Provider to Enterprise

Enterprise to end user

Service Provider to Enterprise

Network providers to service providers (Network access providers)

Manufacturer to network provider, service provider or enterprise

Content provider to content integrator or advertiser

In order to succeed in the competition, companies must manage their service quality with foresight. Because providing these services depends on multiple partners, the management of partner service SLAs is critical to success. SLAs are used to define and manage partners ' expectations for performance, user experience, billing, service rationing, and other business areas.

SLA management can also be used to assess predefined adverse consequences when SLA parameters are not met (such as inability to meet performance, timelines, or cost requirements). For example, if cloud computing downtime is more than an hour, the penalty is to reduce the service charge by 10%.

Tmforum provides a set of FRAMEWORX standards that help service providers assess and improve performance by using service-oriented approaches for operations and integration. This set of criteria includes the Business Process Framework (ETOM), Information Framework (SID), creator Framework (TAM), Integration Framework and Business Metrics.

Cloud Service Customer Council: Emerging SLA Standard Terminology

Cloud Standards Customer Council (CSCC) is a omg® End user Initiative group dedicated to accelerating the success of the cloud adoption process. It is not a standard organization, but it complements existing cloud standard work. Its sponsors include IBM, Kaavo, Rackspace, and Software AG, which are open to all end user organizations.

The Council focuses on standards, security, and interoperability issues that occur during the transition to the cloud. Specifically, it is a proponent of standard terminology and values for cloud SLAs. The cloud service SLA standard does not yet exist.

The council sees cloud SLAs as a written expectation of services between cloud users and providers. When decision makers evaluate and compare SLAs from different cloud providers to end users, it provides decision-makers with guidelines on what to expect and understand. Policymakers should also assess SLAs between cloud providers and vendors, enterprise data centers, network providers, content providers, and others.

National Cato of Standards and Marvell: de facto joint standards

Some cloud service users expect the actual cloud definition of the federated standard. This standard definition, provided by national Cato Standard and Marvell (NIST), seems to have mostly targeted government agencies, as government agencies turn to the cloud in order to provide more efficient services to end users.

In September 2011, NIST released the definition of cloud computing, which reads as follows:

Cloud computing is a model that can be implemented anytime, anywhere, easily and on-demand resources from a pool of configurable computing resources (such as networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) can be quickly supplied and released, minimizing the workload of managing resources and interacting with service providers. NIST lists the 5 basic features of cloud computing:

On-demand self-service

Anywhere Network access

Pooling of resources

Quickly and freely

Measurable services

NIST lists three service models: software, platform, and infrastructure. It divides the deployment model into four component areas: private, community, public, and mixed.

December 2011, NIST issued guidelines for security and privacy in public cloud computing. In May 2012, NIST released a copy of a draft cloud computing overview and referral to describe the advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing.

What is the future of cloud standards?

We should keep in mind the expectations of SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS users when comparing providers with standards and user initiative organizations. For several years, there was little hope of a complete standardization of IaaS. When decision makers compare SLAs, it provides decision makers with SLA management best practices to help them understand what should be expected and mastered, while SLA's cloud computing standards and values continue to evolve.

One option is to build a team of developers, managers, and business analysts (in other words, real experts) to make the standard-setting process simpler. They can help determine:

The gap in cloud service standards.

How we can narrow these gaps.

How we evolve SLA best practices into SLA standards.