The Cloud4SOA initiative (FP7) focuses on resolving the semantic interoperability issues that exist in current Clouds platforms and infrastructures and on introducing a user-centric approach for applications which are built upon and deployed using Cloud resources.
The vision of Cloud4SOA is to open up the Cloud market to small-medium European PaaS providers and strengthen their market position, and to alleviate the vendor lock-in barrier for Cloud developers. Cloud4SOA will address the above challenge by enhancing the Cloud-based application development, deployment and migration by semantically interconnecting heterogeneous Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings across different providers that share the same technology, and will facilitate the access and lifecycle management for Cloud-based application developers to the PaaS offering that best matches their computational and business needs.
The Call for Interoperability
Cloud Computing’s quick rise to the market is flourishing due to clear industry-ready benefits: a business model to decrease capital expenditure, a “pay-as-you-go” service model, Platform as a Service (PaaS), public/private/hybrid Infrastructure as Service (IaaS) combinations, storage solutions, dynamic provisioning, and more.
At its high pace the Cloud paradigm brings associated risks, as well, with vendor “lock-in” among the top of the list. Cloud vendors will be pressed to ensure interoperability with parallel (and competing) platforms as users become more invested in their hosting services. The future will need a compromise between vendor-distinct innovation and user-friendly standardisation that allows movement of applications and data between providers.
Although standardisation is in its infancy for Clouds, the call for this interoperability between vendors’ platforms not only serves to surpass this barrier in adoption but also ensures increased competition in this evolving user-focussed market.
