Chapter 18

Standards in a Hybrid World

In This Chapter

Looking at the evolution of standards

Categories of cloud-related standards

Organizations building momentum around standards

The impact of standards for the hybrid cloud

Standards are established common and repeatable practices that have been agreed to by a business or group. An open standard is one which is publically available (typically for free) and has rights surrounding it on how it can be used. Typically, different vendors, groups, and end users collaborate to develop standards based on the broad expertise of a large number of stakeholders. Organizations can leverage these standards as a common foundation and build on top of them.

Broad adoption of open standards throughout an industry or other group is critical in order to yield the benefits. Standards in a hybrid cloud are a work in progress, but they’re important because they help you improve quality, reduce cost, and improve choices. Without broadly adopted open standards for the models, formats, and conventions for interacting with cloud capability, the hybrid cloud environment presents significant challenges.

Simply put, without standards, or agreed upon approaches, moving your infrastructure or applications from one cloud provider to another, or from on-premises to a public or private cloud, is a difficult prospect that can slow an organization’s development. Integrating your on-premises data center in a hybrid model would be difficult. Standards also help to ensure security and prevent vendor lock-in. All of these issues are key in a hybrid environment.