What exactly 'Open Cloud' means for Open Data Center Alliance

The Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA), a consortium with more than 400 members which is dedicated to accelerating adoption of interoperable solutions and services for cloud computing, aims to clear the ‘open cloud’ confusion with a paper explaining what the term means. In the paper, the members of the ODCA, which includes Intel, Infosys, BMW, Microsoft among others, have tried to explain what ‘open’ means for them. [caption id=“attachment_1999251” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption] “The technology industry has spent the last several years assigning the term ‘open’ to all manner of new trade associations and initiatives. Now it has so many meanings, it’s actually become fodder for debate. As members of the Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA), we can start by stating what “open” means to us,” the paper stated.

For the Open Data Center Alliance, ‘open’  stands for open solutions built upon open standards. These solutions focus on transparency, interoperability, and cost efficiency to overcome some common obstacles in moving to the cloud. “A cloud service that complies with open standards does not have to use open source software, although it could.”

The paper claimed that many members of the ODCA champion open source. However, the ‘open’ in Open Data Center Alliance stands for open solutions built using open standards.

“We believe that open standards, open solutions, and interoperability represent a means to achieve greater consistency, improved proficiency, and sustainable implementations.”

The ODCA focuses on establishing the requirements that can advance open solutions for enterprise clouds, it concluded.