Is the world ready for an open cloud manifesto?

The Open Cloud Manifesto, dedicated to the belief that the cloud should be open, launched with 36 firms signed on in support. That list of support now seems to have grown to nearly 140 companies, according to the Open Cloud Manifesto Web site. The document outlines core value propositions and basic definitions, points out challenges and barriers to adoption, lists a small set of goals, and then details a list of several principles of a maturing cloud — all in about eight pages.

Up until now, there really hasn’t been much of an attempt to lasso in what the term “cloud” means in the Wild West of IT. Like the term “virtualization,” cloud has become part of the IT buzzword bingo phenomena, being tossed in and around marketing material of new products just for good measure. If you want to be hip, you need to be virtual or in the cloud!

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Clearly, defining and setting some boundaries around something like the cloud seems like a good thing. But is the world ready to define it? Do we know enough? Or is this document right? It concludes that the manifesto is meant to begin the conversation, not define it. It states that many of the details (taxonomies, definitions, and scenarios) will be filled in as the cloud computing community comes together. The manifesto authors argue that this is exactly the right time to begin the work needed to build the open cloud.

But even with 140-plus companies signing on the dotted line, there is a glaring hole with companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce.com making themselves absent from the party. Where are these early cloud adopters? Why have they not signed on to start the conversation?

Steven Martin, Microsoft’s senior director of developer platform product management, said in a recent blog post that they were admittedly disappointed by the lack of openness in the development of the Cloud Manifesto. He said the document was created in secret and that Microsoft was asked to sign it “as is” without a chance to offer its own revisions. Martin did say, however, that Microsoft loves the concept and they strongly support an open, collaborative discussion with customers, analysts, and other vendors regarding the direction and principles of cloud computing.

Ian Knox, director of product management at Skytap, told me few can argue with any of the broad principles in the document, including Skytap.  But criticism has risen from a lack of clear process going forward and an absence of key cloud providers on the list of signatories.

“The cloud market is still nascent and, at this stage, cloud vendors and open source initiatives will work aggressively to seek competitive differentiation,” said Knox. “When a coalition of vendors sees the benefit in standardization of a set of technologies based on customer feedback, they will create a standard to enable them to differentiate in other areas. We believe that allowing vendor coalitions to compete and standards to eventually emerge will ultimately lead to ‘open clouds’ faster than a single standards process. In some cases, major vendors will use their market position to set standards rather than engage in a standards process. However, we think that ultimately innovation, competition, and customer focus will lead to choice for consumers of cloud services.”

The manifesto may be early, but it is on to something.  There are those who are in favor of certain things and those who will be against it. It is the nature of our IT industry, and people in general, and that story isn’t new.

It took the community a long time to step in and start creating some clear definitions around virtualization and demanding interoperability. But it took just that: a community. Once virtualization was adopted and accepted, it matured to the point where we knew what it was capable of and where it could take us. And vendors, analysts, media, and consumers came together (for the most part) to start defining and outlining the technology. The cloud is early; I don’t think anyone disagrees with that. But it will take more than just a few vendors to come together to define and outline the technology. It has to start somewhere, but I think everyone needs to step up and participate in some way to get this thing to where it needs to be.