The need for a standard cloud taxonomy

The Cloud Interoperability meeting prior to Cloud Connect in Mountain View, Calif., last week was a very interesting petri dish of some of the best and brightest in the cloud-computing marketplace.

There certainly was a quorum of companies represented (though Amazon.com couldn't make it at the last minute, and Microsoft never replied to the invitation). There also, as you might imagine, was no shortage of opinion on how to proceed.

As you might imagine in such a situation, most of the day was taken by attendees expressing their personal visions of cloud interoperability and standards building, only to boil next steps down to developing a taxonomy and sorting out a small list of the most pressing concepts to be explored. A wiki was proposed, and I will share the URL when I get it.

Here is the whiteboard at the end of the day (artistry courtesy of David Berlind, one of the founders of the event):

While the whiteboard may suggest that there was a large amount of agreement on the core concepts and that taxonomy was but a minor player, the reality is exactly the opposite. We couldn't agree on much of anything, except that there is a need for taxonomy and that trust (namely security) was one of the most pressing issues.

Funny enough, this is almost exactly the same conclusion reached in my recent discussions with some Cisco Systems partners, and (apparently) by Reuven Cohen, founder of Enomaly and the Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum (CCIF). Reuven conversed with Cannonical Services Director Simon Wardley--one of the Cloud Interop participants--and reached the joint conclusion that we need a stable, accepted taxonomy for cloud computing to "grease the skids," so to speak, for vendor interoperability discussions.

I have to say I'm down with that. I'm just not convinced that the right forum to gain consensus among the growing "cloudosphere" exists yet. Perhaps it is the CCIF. Perhaps this wiki that Berlind proposed. It would be unfortunate if market forces and time are the only answer. If not, then I'll be wherever I am needed to move the process forward.

[rjudas]

James,
good posting. I think that the taxonmy question is among the most important issues dealing with our beloved new cloud computing paradigm. This is especially true in times, where new #Killerstartups are popping up at such a high rate offering highly meshed services. Sometimes I feel like a IT retiree, beeing just under 40.

How can you trust someone, if you don't know his name or where he's from? Where are the academics? Don't we (industry, Customers) need them to help us define Taxonomies or even interchangable standards?

So many questions....

Roland

[nasserd]

I think information specialists (architects) can play a major role... except their hands are currently tied in other ventures. Information science is a growing field and the entire venture may be at a stand-still until the right troops are talking.

[enomaly]

The question are we referring to a taxonomy or an ontology? At the end of the day what we need is a way to describe a common taxonomy / ontology that will form the basis for a consensus view of cloud terminology that the cloud computing industry at large uses when describing their products and services.

[nasserd]

Using common terms is nice, but who is bringing the vision and imagination into the discussions? That's what matters more than taxonomies/ontologies.

[samjohnston]

No, at the end of the day what we need is simple, replicable reference architectures and "consensus" APIs that people can implement *now*. Quoting a comment below, "Making systems hard is easy, making systems easy is hard.", and yet most of what has been done so far in the area of taxonomies/ontologies is greatly complicating what is otherwise quite simple. Yes the devil's in the details, but the details are someone else's problem.

Sam

[bobsutor]

James, My comments from the cloud standards meeting are now online at http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/?p=3321.

Bob Sutor

[simon77vm]

Great points James,

It is going to be interesting to see what service providers think about offering services as part of an interoperable mega cloud. If you compare it to managed server sales, it is hard not to see how this very quickly becomes a commodity. (imagine when Host Gator, 1800-hosting and their like have their own cloud). Network World had an article today about a company building "EC2 in a Box" things are going to change very fast.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/012809-vmops-cloud.html?hpg1=bn

[glamourati]

It is a waste of time to try to lay out how it will all work, and that makes your article a very good one. This same attempt to "perfectify" it from the outset has always been there as new standards evolve. The reality is, nobody gets it right on the first try and users and the market will ultimately choose what they want. What usually happens is one of two things. Either somebody steps in and says "enough is enough, here it is" and it is adopted because even the inferior idea that is out there in the market is better than the best one that is still in the drawer - see the ODBC story. Or, more likely the big fishes force their partners to do it their way - see Walmart. The standards will be de facto in a cloud environment as most systems are on the Net. Also, what is more important than use cases, UML, whiteboards, etc. is what the end-user experience will be. It has to be simple, open, simple and open - did I mention simple and open? Making systems hard is easy, making systems easy is hard. To the same, the front-end of the cloud will be the most important part because that is the part the end users will interact with. Do you care what happens when you get money from your ATM? SaaS's PaaS's will be the front-end of the cloud, but SaaS and current PaaS's are closed so they will just be one phase in the long run. The next phase will be Open Platform as a Service (OPaaS). OPaaS companies like Modbox http://www.sullivansoftwaresystems.com/modbox will put the needed front-end on the cloud "water for the cloud" if you will.

[samjohnston]

"Making systems hard is easy, making systems easy is hard" pretty much sums it up nicely. Unfortunately many of the voices in this conversation depend on business models built around the former, while the real value of cloud computing rests in the latter.

Your open PaaS stuff is interesting, and getting very close to some stuff I wrote last year - see http://code.google.com/p/cush/ which is the first cloud computing interactive shell and a good demonstration of some of the concepts your pushing. In terms of PaaS itself though you might be more interested in the work we've been doing starting last week in the Cloud Standards Group at http://groups.google.com/group/cloud-standards. You're more than welcome to get involved in either or both initiatives.

Sam

[pfoucher]

This is interesting. Does anyone have a current handle on the current number and types of Cloud Middleware players?

Would be curious to know who they are and -
What Hypervisor or OS they target?

What tools they use to develop their middleware?

What tools they anticipate people will use to write apps on top of?

What databases or webserving engines they are or anticipate working with?

What software components are necessary to run?