What happens when you need to switch cloud providers?
The lack of standards for virtual machines presents a very significant problem for users.
Depending on how you've deployed your applications, you either have portability or you don't. Generally speaking you will be stuck (for better or worse) with your VM image vendor, assuming you had a choice in the first place.
I spoke to John Pozadzides, chief marketing officer of LayeredTech, a hosting provider that has deployed a lot of grid-oriented infrastructure.
My main question for Pozadzides: what happens if I want to move my stuff?
Unfortunately there is no clear answer. It all depends on the VMs you are using (assuming you are using VMs at all) and if there is another cloud option. Otherwise you may have to go internal. For example, if you use Google App Engine, there are other Python hosts available but they probably don't have the Google-scale. At that point, you have to move those servers into your own environment (hosted or internal).
A couple of possibilities on migration:
1. You could set up the same VM infrastructure and replicate.
2. You could set up physical server resources and do a migration.
It seems like its very difficult to move from say VMware to Xen or vice versa. Hence, the need for Java-in-the-Cloud where VMs are just a deployment option.
There is a very large risk of cloud lock-in, though I'm not sure that it matters as long as you have a way to get off of a specific provider.
Dave Rosenberg dishes up "Software, Interrupted" with nearly 15 years of technology and marketing experience that spans from Bell Labs to multiple start-up IPOs to open-source enterprise software companies. He is co-founder of MuleSource and currently serves as the general manager of Hardy Way. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can contact Dave via e-mail at softwareinterrupted@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @daveofdoom. 
VMware, Citrix XenServer, and (soon) other virtualization providers are in the process of delivering support for a portable container format called OVF (Open Virtual Machine Format), a DMTF standard those companies and others submittedi OVF will enable full VM portability.
"There is a very large risk of Cloud lock-in, but I'm not sure that it matters as long as you have a way to get off of a specific provider."
The "risk" is always "money and time": if you are in the cloud, possible it is because it is cheaper than having your hard/host/soft... money/time that you have to put in case you run your own solution.
Basic business thinking.
http://www.joyeur.com/2008/05/08/cloud-nine-specification-for-a-cloud-computer-a-call-to-action
A more detailed analysis of what a cloud service is (or should be), which is a step towards interoperability.
- by drjamesblake August 26, 2008 11:41 PM PDT
- I work for a cloud services provider and we enshrine the fact that the data always belongs to the customer in one of our SLAs. If the customer wishes to move from our service, we supply their data back to them in a data format or media of their choice. We have to do this because the question of who owns the data and how they can get it off our platform at a later date almost always comes up during the sales cycle.
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