A combination of interoperability and portability is the Holy Grail of cloud computing, but is nearly impossible to achieve without standards. Hypervisor vendors give lip service to standardization, but have yet to deliver. Standards enable open source applications, foster competition and innovation. In this session, we will discuss cloud computing standards, emphasizing interoperability and package delivery using the Open Virtualization Format (OVF). OVF is an open, secure, portable, efficient and extensible format for the packaging and distribution of software to be run in virtual machines. Abiquo applies OVF to effectively manage multiple datacenters in one platform, making it possible to define and replicate deployments in different infrastructures. Vendor to vendor transfers are quick and easy thanks to OVF. |