A recent T.H.E. Journal article reviewed a session conducted by Jean Paoli, Microsoft's general manager for interoperability strategy at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention in Portland, OR. Paoli, speaking to open source software professionals at OSCON, outlined four "interoperability elements" that Microsoft put forth as essential for achieving an open cloud platform. Microsoft's main goal, at this point, is to advance the conversation, connecting with the open source community and customers, Paoli explained in a blog post.
The four cloud interoperability elements outlined by Paoli included:
Enabling portability for customer data;
Supporting commonly used standards;
Providing easy migration and deployment; and
Ensuring developer choice on languages, runtimes, and tools.
Microsoft's attempt to define an open cloud isn't the first. As with any developing standard, industry players need to pull together and agree on architecture and interfaces. Stay tuned…