Big Names Absent From Open Cloud Manifesto

IBM on Monday announced the Open Cloud Manifesto, an industry effort that seeks to define terms for maintaining interoperability in cloud computing. But several of the industry's biggest cloud computing vendors are glaringly absent from its list of signatories.

Sun Microsystems, Cisco, Novell, Red Hat, VMware, Juniper and a host of smaller companies have signed the Open Cloud Manifesto, but Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Salesforce.com -- companies whose cloud computing efforts are much more than just strategies at this point -- have declined.

As some industry watchers have pointed out, the Open Cloud Manifesto's view of how the cloud computing industry needs to evolve appears to be heavily skewed against Microsoft, which raises the possibility that this is little more than a way for IBM to kick some sand in Microsoft's face.

For example, the Open Cloud Manifesto includes statements such as, "Cloud providers must not use their market position to lock customers into their particular platforms and limit their choice of providers," and, "We must ensure that standards promote innovation and do not inhibit it." It's not such a great leap to say that Microsoft is being targeted here.

Microsoft last week criticized the Open Cloud Manifesto organizers for attempting to strong-arm the company into signing at the last minute, which Microsoft declined to do. "An open manifesto emerging from a closed process is at least mildly ironic," Steven Martin, senior director of development platform management at Microsoft, said in a blog post last week.

Cloud computing is still very much in its infancy, and so any customer that signs up today is by definition a bleeding-edge adopter who understands the risks of being locked into a particular vendor's technology, says Ken Winell, CEO of ExpertCollab, a SharePoint-focused solution provider in Florham Park, N.J.

"I think the platforms, along with some of the convergence initiatives from Cisco and HP, will change the cloud structures, and so it is probably premature to lock in something," Winell said. "And with the current economic turmoil, unless a business deal is very lucrative, most customers are going to be gun-shy to spend unless true savings and stability are realized."

Daniel Duffy, CEO of Valley Network Solutions, a Microsoft Gold partner in Fresno, Calif., doesn't see much of a need for a manifesto that spells out how to ensure interoperability in cloud computing.

"It's all based on open standards anyway, and every vendor puts their own unique spin on the delivery mechanisms, interfaces and functionality," Duffy said. "Interoperability is a necessity in our business though, and open, transparent systems are the key to making that possible."