Cloud usage models to save users $25bn

BANGALORE, INDIA: Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA), a group formed late last year to drive open, interoperable cloud solutions, published user driven cloud usage guidelines for cloud computing usage.

The alliance, which has over 280 members with a collective annual IT spending of over $100 billion, says that these guidelines aim to reduce $25 billion in annual IT costs within five years and unleash over $50 billion in cloud services innovation.

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The document includes eight Open Data Center usage models which define IT requirements for cloud adoption and an Open Data Centre vision for cloud computing.

These lay out a plan to enable federation, agility and efficiency across cloud computing while identifying specific innovations in secure federation, automation, common management and policy and solution transparency required for widespread adoption of cloud services.

Highlights of usage models:

Provides security assurance and security monitoring address IT’s greatest challenge for cloud adoption by proposing standard security levels for cloud services and compliance.

Service catalogue and standard units of measurement for IaaS enable feature, price and performance comparisons across private and public clouds for increased transparency and easier IT decision-making.

Virtual machine interoperability and IO controls address the technical foundation required for federated cloud interoperability and improved quality of service.

Regulation and carbon footprint values outline expectations for cloud services to ensure compliance to government and corporate reporting requirements and outline a means for services to be CO2 aware for subscribers.

Industry Alliance

The ODCA is collaborating with an ecosystem of standards bodies and vendors to turn the guidelines into industry-backed, implementable solutions. Today the Open Data Center Alliance announced the following initial engagements:

Cloud Security Association (CSA) to drive standards definitions for security requirements.

The Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) to define IT infrastructure management requirements.

The Enterprise Cloud Leadership Council (ECLC) to advance services definition.

The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) to drive standards for service transparency.

In order to ensure both adoption and industry delivery to usage models, the Alliance is also collaborating with cloud vendors such as Dell, EMC, Parallels and Red Hat.