Customer scepticism is often proportional to the amount of hyperbole created in the IT industry. The fortunes of the term IT Cloud have been a clear example. Veteran observers look for various signs to ascertain whether new concepts will achieve mass adoption. One sign is whether the industry rallies behind the concept by jointly developing standards. SNIA got off to an early start and is working on the Cloud Data Management Interface but its output has recently been sporadic.
In parallel VISION Cloud has emerged as a venture that is funded by the EU and has a variety of vendors, academia and IT users as partners. This project is funded until Sept. 2013, and was launched in Oct. 2010. The VISION Cloud states that it intends “architecture and a reference implementation of a cloud-based infrastructure, built on open standards and new technologies, to provide a scalable, flexible and dependable framework for optimised delivery of data-intensive storage services”. The website hints at the future of the Internet, but that bulk of the content points to storage related focus.
The 5 key areas are listed as:
- New Model of Data Storage
- Data Mobility and Federation
- Computational Storage
- Content-Centric Storage
- Capabilities for Cloud-based Storage
That appears like an ambitious agenda, however keeping its focus on storage may give it a chance to deliver some results by 2013. The other open question is whether this group with a good number of universities as members will be able to translate their intentions into something customers can adopt. Rainmaker will keep exploring the progress.
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