Cloud leaders collaborate on OpenCloud Project |
CEF Open Day presents roadmap to globally integrated cloud services |
Santa Clara, CA, USA. 28th July 2014: Today Comcast, Verizon and Tata will host the first meeting of the OpenCloud Project, a live test environment that forms the basis for a revolution in the validation of end-to-end interoperability for cloud, datacenter and network services. The OpenCloud Project is open to all companies worldwide, and is sponsored by the CloudEthernet Forum, a member industry group that includes: Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Comcast, Ciena, Cisco, Citrix, CoreSite, Ericsson, Equinix, Juniper, HP, Huawei, Interexion, PCCW Global, Spirent Communications, Tata Communications, Telx, Verizon and many others. The CEF is focused on shaping open standards, cloud interoperability and uniform application programming interfaces (APIs), for service providers and enterprises. There are many challenges for today’s enterprise cloud customers. Those that enterprises frequently mention to CEF members include:
These issues and many others are in danger of severely limiting the burgeoning cloud services’ market potential. The root cause is network service providers, cloud service providers, datacenter operators and enterprises all use different APIs and interfaces to communicate, as CEF President James Walker explained. “This is where our open test and iterative standards development program begins,” says Walker. “Where other standards bodies had the space to shape standards in advance of market penetration, cloud computing is already surging ahead in every direction — powered by NFV, SDN, virtualization technologies and networking – technologies that are themselves still evolving quickly. Our response is to iteratively develop the Reference Architecture, the Test Bed and the standards simultaneously to keep ahead of business needs. The aim is to evolve a fully interworking cloud environment and the advance best practices to manage OTT and cloud services.” Iometrix President, Bob Mandeville, heading up the OpenCloud Project lab, showed how co-operation among cloud service players generates standard practices for the delivery of cloud services. “Cloud services draw on multiple new technologies, all of which are in a constant state of development. OpenCloud is about testing new implementations in a real interconnected environment, exploring and accelerating solutions to problems that directly impact the business of buying and selling cloud services.” More than 20 new companies with a strong interest in shaping cloud services to serve their future business needs were briefed by CEF leadership on the OpenCloud Project and the role of the CEF in Santa Clara this week. Participation in the CEF also provides them an opportunity to work in close collaboration with leading service providers, cloud operators, equipment vendors, software developers and large enterprise customers. Jeff Schmitz, CEF Chairman, commented, “The OpenCloud Project is now in the design stage. We are putting a range of use cases to the test, starting with remote relocation and multiplication of virtual machines across the cloud. The published results will reveal what does and does not work and will invite participation in addressing these challenges. Those who commit to the project now will help shape tomorrow and the $200Bn cloud services market.” One of the newest recruits to the CEF, Bill Burns, President & CEO, Embrane, commented on this week’s event: “Global cloud connectivity is vital. There is concern that the industry is fragmented, with proprietary APIs and no consistency of the attributes that can be controlled and automated. Note: |
About the CEF To address the $200B cloud services market, the CEF aims to accelerate and facilitate the use of standard protocols to support large scale global datacenter deployments, making cloud services easier, faster, more secure, and affordable to deploy. The CloudEthernet Forum is an independent MEF organization. For more information, please visit www.CloudEthernet.org |