IEEE’s Cloud Portability Project: A Fool’s Errand?

IEEE, the international standards-making organization, is jumping with both feet into the cloud computing space and announcing the launch of its new Cloud Computing Initiative. The IEEE is trying to create two standards for how cloud applications and services would interact and be portable across clouds.

The two standards are IEEE P2301, Draft Guide for Cloud Portability and Interoperability Profiles, and IEEE P2302, Draft Standard for Inter-cloud Interoperability and Federation.

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The goal of IEEE P2301 is to provide a road map for cloud vendors, service providers, and other key cloud providers for use in their cloud environments. If IEEE P2301 does what it promises and is adopted, the IEEE says it would aid users in procuring, developing, building, and using standards-based cloud computing products and services, with the objective of enabling better portability, increased commonality, and interoperability.

The goal of IEEE P2302 is to define the topology, protocols, functionality, and governance required to support cloud-to-cloud interoperability.

Don’t expect anything to happen any time soon. The standards process typically takes years and years. Even the first step has yet to occur for these standards: the formation of their working groups. However, IEEE is good at defining the details behind standards, as evidenced by its widely used platform and communication standards. By contrast, most of the standards that emerge from organizations other than the IEEE are just glorified white papers — not enough detail to be useful.

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