Management tools make up for flaws in cloud computing standards

You might think that the lack of a cloud-computing service Management standard is a major obstacle to promoting the new technology. If you really think so, then you are wrong.

Generally speaking, for any new technology you can say a had from two aspects: standard immaturity and management vacancy. But, in fact, the vast majority of companies do not regard the lack of cloud computing standards as a major obstacle to their development. This is not a bad thing because these standards are likely to be late.

Each cloud vendor has relevant management tools to provide users with a way to handle some of their application platforms-including application software, operating systems, middleware, and hardware-which is actually what cloud computing provides. For companies planning to use a single cloud computing provider, the vendor's management system is exactly what they need, and it does not really make sense for their systems to have a standard. For companies that want to use multiple cloud computing services, they have to be cautious, but this is not a good reason not to implement cloud computing.

SaaS Management and PAAs management

In Software as a service (SaaS), enterprises do not make a useful contribution to the development of cloud computing, and cloud providers control the application and its management completely. The good news is that SaaS management is still focused on managing applications. This infrastructure is not visible to users, which means that the management of SaaS is focused on controlling the authorization to use the application and how data is stored and backed up.

These functions specified in the cloud are very similar to the functionality specified by the datacenter. Therefore, cloud management standards are unlikely to have much impact on SaaS. If you are a SaaS consumer, you have the least administrative burden of improving your ability to manage your application without any so-called standard help.

After having a platform as a service (PaaS), cloud computing hosts servers, storage services, operating systems, and application middleware tools such as database management systems. Enterprises have contributed to application software and some additional middleware components. It also contributes to application management by managing a PAAs application in the same way that it manages preinstalled applications in the datacenter.

The data center in PAAs mode is in the cloud, so this is part of the different management process. In the general PAAs model, such as Microsoft Azure, a management portal manages the entire PAAs environment.

Organizations using two different PAAs clouds may find two reasons why the management process is difficult to reconcile:

1. As with application management, platform management is highly dependent on the platform's components and how they are organized. Therefore, each PAAS vendor may have a different management system because the PAAs product itself is different.

2. It is recommended that enterprises with two (or more) different PAAs vendors have two or more distinct server platforms in their actual applications within the data center. For example, Windows and Linux. Anyone with hands-on experience knows that cross-platform coordination management and support processes can be difficult even when you have to use cloud management interfaces rather than using internal management options. But unlike SaaS, we can expect something from the PAAs Cloud management standards because platform components are so difficult to manage.

How the IaaS management standards stand out

Cloud computing management standards are most relevant in infrastructure, service (IaaS). Because the IaaS model allows IT managers to choose everything except the hardware itself, there is a better chance to move your clock management tools to the cloud and use them freely. You don't need to change your application and platform management, but you have to manage how the cloud vendor allocates its servers, storage, caching, and other tools resources. IaaS standards are critical because companies are more likely to have multiple IaaS vendors than other cloud computing models. Even if the standards of cloud management are complete and adhered to so that IaaS can benefit from it, it cannot meet those restrictive conditions.

The first issue is the multiplicity of cloud computing management standards, due to the fact that so many cloud computing standards have been created. There are 13 of them on the website of the popular Cloud Computing Standards Agency, with at least half of them having a lot of interest in a cloud management standard. The group is working to form a standard, but it has not yet been finalized.

The second problem is that industry-leading cloud providers have little opportunity to support standards. Amazon, for example, does not comply with any standards that are in the process of being enacted.

So how do you look for a cloud management standard? The answer is to use as much administrative tools as you can with your cloud computing architecture. You should also pray that most suppliers will follow Amazon's cloud management strategy. If there are really efficient cloud management standards, they should be compatible with the strategy.

Finally, rely on high-level management tools such as HP's OpenView or IBM's Tivoli to coordinate management policies-even in the case of internal cloud computing services with different management options. It doesn't have to be easy, but cloud management should be easier than you think.

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)