{"id":3245,"date":"2012-09-19T07:00:36","date_gmt":"2012-09-19T15:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.formtek.com\/blog\/?p=3245"},"modified":"2012-09-19T07:00:36","modified_gmt":"2012-09-19T15:00:36","slug":"cloud-computing-what-does-it-mean-to-be-an-open-cloud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/cloud-computing-what-does-it-mean-to-be-an-open-cloud\/","title":{"rendered":"Cloud Computing: What Does it Mean to Be an Open Cloud?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Enterprises have long been captives of traditional on-premise software. \u00a0They’ve been trapped by vendors because \u00a0the expense and difficulty of migrating to a competitor is not a viable alternative. \u00a0So it comes as no surprise that as businesses gradually migrate data to the cloud that they’re wary about the potential of being locked into one vendor’s software for a long time. \u00a0IDC reports<\/a> that, for 72 percent of businesses, whether or not a cloud vendor uses open source, open standards and open APIs is a key criteria for them in choosing the cloud service. \u00a0They’re looking for vendors that support what’s being called an ‘Open Cloud’.<\/p>\n

But how do you know an Open Cloud when you see one?<\/p>\n

Scott Crenshaw<\/a>, vice president of Red Hat’s cloud business, says that the cloud solution \u00a0needs to have the following criteria, as reported by Joe Brockmeier<\/a> on\u00a0RedWriteWeb<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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  1. Open source<\/li>\n
  2. Active community of users<\/li>\n
  3. Based on open standards<\/li>\n
  4. Based on software free of possible patent infringements<\/li>\n
  5. Lets you deploy to your choice of infrastructure<\/li>\n
  6. Pluggable, extensible and open API<\/li>\n
  7. Enables portability across clouds<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n

    Alex Williams<\/a> on TechCrunch <\/a>added a few more characteristics of an Open Cloud solution:<\/p>\n