Lack of cloud standards means varying app performance

Monday, November 08, 2010

IT groups that are comparison shopping cloud options may run into difficulty due to a lack of standards dictating cloud computing performance, a new report stated.

According to CIO magazine, an apples-to-apples comparison of a particular cloud application from one vendor versus another may prove impossible because there is not a standard industry benchmark against which cloud services are compared.

In fact, it’s even difficult to compare costs among cloud providers, noted Geva Perry, a cloud market strategy blogger.

According to CIO, a number of cloud-measurement services have surfaced to try to address these needs within the last year, with results ranging from specific to generic.

Cloud providers are trying to provide online monitoring of performance and security to provide a level of transparency to customers, said John Barnes of cloud-integration and consulting company Model Metrics. But that doesn’t mean companies will be able to compare one vendor’s metrics to another, CIO asserted.

Representatives from about 70 companies recently forged an alliance with the intention of creating a set of open standards for the cloud. The Open Data Center Alliance, which include representatives from Intel, Lockheed Martin and BMW, is pushing for a “vendor-agnostic” roadmap for future cloud architectures.