New CAMP Specification Promises To Standardize the PaaS Space

by Paul Rudo on 12/09/12 at 6:19 pm

As I’ve written about in the past, the loss of control that comes with a cloud migration has been a major sticking point when it comes to leveraging cloud computing for more serious business applications.

Although the cloud offers some very attractive efficiencies and cost-saving opportunities, it also presents a number of perceived strategic risks:

Developers are worried about compatibility and interoperability when developing for the cloud. (What would happen if you spent 4 months developing for a specific PaaS vendor, only to have them close up shop?)
Executives are worried about privacy, compliance, governance and transparency.
IT managers are worried about issues such as vendor lock-in, scalability and monitoring.

The risk is very real, and the solution has been made overwhelmingly clear. Customers are demanding an open, transparent, vendor-neutral cloud. The best way to enhance customer trust for the cloud is to create a set of universally accepted standards which are governed by a neutral body.

We’ve already seen an open attitude within SaaS space, with APIs and open authentication. And more recently, the IaaS space has come together in support of Deltacloud.

The PaaS space is also in need of standardization.

Although the space itself is relatively young, we’re seeing new innovation being driven at an accelerating pace. And as offerings become more complex, they will diverge and create potential for vendor lock-in.

Businesses are also expressing interest in hybrid cloud model which would require a cloud-agnostic approach.

Major vendors, including Rackspace, Red Hat, Oracle, Cloudsoft, CloudBees and others have come together to propose the Cloud Application Management Platform (CAMP), which has been submitted to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards for consideration. Camp will act as a single API standard which works across multiple clouds while ensuring interoperability and providing consumers with choice and freedom.

For more information about CAMP, you can visit their homepage here.