Interoperability hinders cloud adoption

Standards and interoperability are becoming increasingly important as the world's enterprises turn to the cloud.

This is according to Riedwaan Bassadien, Microsoft SA's platform strategy manager, and one of the speakers at the upcoming ITWeb Virtualisation and Cloud Computing Summit in Johannesburg.

Bassadien believes one of the key stumbling blocks in the way of cloud adoption is that organisations are concerned about vendor lock-in.

He says as cloud computing grows and becomes more mainstream, interoperability, standards and openness will become an increasing source of friction.

Bassadien says: “The cloud connects billions of diverse devices together and, increasingly, it connects our digital lives together - both personal and work.”

Consider the kinds of innovations that are possible when different types of clouds work well with each other in terms of data and processing - the world of mash-ups, he says. “To really deliver on the promise of innovation and the efficiencies that go with it, we need to have a way for disparate cloud systems and devices to work well together.”

He says this is where interoperability bridges come into play.

“An interoperability bridge happens when two or more providers of disparate systems come together to work so well that the user is not aware of the bridge. A classic example in traditional IT is Microsoft Office working well on a Mac.”

According Bassadien, in the cloud - it may be a Facebook application hosted on Windows Azure with a NoSQL database developed in PHP that's backed up to an Amazon S3 storage and can be accessed using any of your favourite devices - the user just sees the application and what it can do for them.

“Building these bridges requires standards and willingness to invest in interoperability from the ground up. Enterprises can move to the cloud but how and where they move is important because not all clouds are equal when it comes to interoperability.”

Bassadien adds that cloud platforms need to provide data portability, open standards, ease of migration, developer choice and greater transparency. “Openness in the cloud really is the next battleground for standards,” he says.

The ITWeb Virtualisation and Cloud Computing Summit will take place at The Forum in Bryanston on 27 July. For more information and to reserve your seat, please click here.