This week an open cloud manifesto has got published with intent of beginning a conversation in the direction of formulating principles for open cloud computing. The companies behind drafting this open cloud manifesto are of an opinion that innovations happening in cloud computing area in terms of standards, interoperability, integration and portability should be guided by the principles of openness.
The manifesto has covered topics like importance and need of cloud computing today and challenges and barriers for its adoption. The cloud computing manifesto has identified goals like availability of choices, flexibility in cloud computing usage, speed and agility to respond quickly to changes and open cloud computing skills. This all should help building a foundation for open standards and architecture for cloud computing.
The initiative is criticized by Microsoft calling it as a secret cloud manifesto. A blog attributed to Steven Martin, senior director of platform product management, has said in its post that the document was asked to sign 'as is' without modification or additional input. Though Microsoft admits that there should be standardization, it feels that it is too early to do that. Amazon supported the initiative and Google is yet to comment on it.
The responses from Microsoft, Amazon and Google will be helpful in guiding the future path for this open cloud manifesto.