Q: What is the Open Cloud Manifesto?zz
A: The Open Cloud Manifesto establishes a core set of principles to ensure that organizations will have freedom of choice, flexibility, and openness as they take advantage of cloud computing. While cloud computing has the potential to have a positive impact on organizations, there is also potential for lock-in and lost flexibility if appropriate open standards are not identified and adopted.
Key members of the cloud community worked together to produce this document and endorse it to establish a set of core principles around the open cloud.
Key members of the cloud community worked together to produce this document and endorse it to establish a set of core principles around the open cloud.
Q: Why was the Open Cloud Manifesto created?
A: Customers want to see cloud environments that give them at least as open an environment as they have with today’s IT choices. This openness gives them choice, flexibility, speed, agility and a large pool of skills to draw from. The Manifesto was written as a rallying cry for the cloud computing community to come together around open technologies.
Q: Who supports the Manifesto?
A: A list can be found at www.opencloudmanifesto.org/supporters.
Q: What should we assume about companies that are not listed as supporters of this document? Does it mean that they are not supportive of open cloud principles?
A:We would strongly discourage anyone from reaching that conclusion. There are many reasons why companies may not be listed. This moved quickly and some companies may not have been reached or simply didn’t have time to make it through their own internal review process. Any company or organization that would like to be added can follow the “sign up” link on the web site to do so.) Some companies wanted the document to endorse specific interfaces as open which was outside the scope of this initial effort – and we did not have time to try to broker agreement on a list. Some had specific concerns with the document relative to its emphasis or priority. We look forward to more input from customers and the community on whether the right next step is further discussion of these broad objectives or the beginning of specific work to deliver on some of these promises.
Q: Does the Open Cloud Manifesto create a new organization of standards body?
A: No. The Open Cloud Manifesto establishes a set of core principles that customers tell us are fundamental expectations of cloud computing technology providers
Q: Now that the Open Cloud Manifesto has been released, what’s next?
A: The Open Cloud Manifesto is designed to initiate the conversation. It should help customers focus on their requirements for openness and help them ask the right set of questions to encourage vendors to work towards open solutions. We fully expect that existing and new standards organizations and communities will take the next step in ensuring that the cloud is open. We have listed several means for discussion in our resource section. In addition, the Open Cloud Manifesto is published under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 3.0. As a result, we encourage others to build on our initial effort
Q: Are there any fees, dues, or legal agreements required for participation?
A: No, the open cloud manifesto is not an organization. There are no fees, dues, or legal agreements to sign.
Q: What is the advantage for me if I participate?
A: Your participation associates your organization with fundamental principles of open cloud computing.
Q: Why did you start with just a few players instead of opening up to anyone on the Internet to participate?
A:This activity took only a few weeks and started as an idea with a small group. Then it expanded to include others as it became clear that this idea needed to be shared or formalized with the broader community. This is typical of any creative process no matter if it is writing a specification, or writing open source code. You start with something and then ask others to participate. Once we had something that seemed like a good start to a document, we decided that we would release under a creative commons license so that the broader community could build on it as they saw fit. However, the document resonated with a wide variety of players who wanted to participate or “sign-on” even though the document was ready to be released to the community. So, we waited a couple of extra days to publish the document, at their request, so that these companies could work through their internal review processes and endorse it before it was released.