The Open Cloud Manifesto

1..       What is the problem? Is the problem real?

Cloud computing is in its infancy now, and users of the cloud range from big corporations to small users relying on the cloud for “hosting” abilities. This paper aims to start a discussion to understand the benefits and risks of cloud computing – very real problem!

 2.       What is the solution's main idea (nugget)?

It is important for the community to come up with a set of open standards that enable innovation below the API with different organizations deploying different techniques, but not tying down the application to any particular interface. Applications should be able to seamlessly “shift” across clouds. Also, if clouds were to become a “service”, it is imperative that there are tight security guarantees as well proper metering and monitoring systems.

 3.       Does the paper (or do you) identify any fundamental/hard trade-offs?

While third-party cloud providers (even if proprietary) greatly reduce the overhead of startups, they have the long-term effect of possibly tying down the application to the specific set of interfaces needed to use the cloud. Likewise, the security guarantees of data leakage etc. provided by third-party clouds are not strong. This makes the prospect of being tied to a particular cloud provider even more shaky.

 4.       Do you think the work will be influential in 10 years? Why or why not?

I think this will be influential. The emergence of an open standard for cloud providers seems imperative, more so because the deployment seems to be progressing hand-in-hand with a reasonable revenue model. Also, the fact that this paper pushes towards good monitoring and metering means that it is serious about this being commercially viable.

 5.       Others:

a. Third-party clouds being shared by different corporations/users presents a great opportunity to reduce power wastage.