Choosing how to build a hybrid cloud is perhaps the most strategic decision IT leaders
will make this decade. It’s a choice that will determine their organization’s
competitiveness, flexibility, and IT economics for the next ten years.
That’s because, done right, a cloud delivers strategic advantages to the business
by redirecting resources from lights-on to innovation. But only an open cloud
delivers on the full strategic business value and promise of cloud computing.
Only by embracing clouds that are open across the full gamut of characteristics
can organizations ensure that their cloud:
* Enables portability of applications and data across clouds
* Fully leverages existing IT investments and infrastructure and avoids
creating new silos
* Makes it possible to build a hybrid cloud that spans physical servers,
multiple virtualization platforms, and public clouds running a variety
of technology stacks
* Allows IT organizations to evolve to the cloud, gaining incremental
value at each step along the way
* Puts the customer in charge of their own technology strategy Introduction.
The final approach, and the one that Red Hat advocates, is to bring the broadest
set of IT assets under a cloud management framework. A few existing—often
static—workloads may be kept separate for a variety of reasons. But such
decisions should come about because they make the most sense from an IT
operational perspective, not because of restrictions imposed by technology
or product.
Taking this approach and supporting these capabilities requires an open cloud.
An open cloud has the following characteristics :
* Is Open Source : This allows adopters to control their particular
implementation and doesn’t restrict them to the technology and
business roadmap of a specific vendor. It puts users in control of
their own destiny and provides them with visibility into the technology
on which they’re basing their business. Open source also lets them
collaborate with other communities and companies to help drive
innovation in the areas that are important to them.
* Has a Viable, independent Community : Open source isn’t just about
the code, its license, and how it can be used and extended. At least as
important is the community associated with the code and how it’s
governed. Realizing the collaborative potential of open source and the
innovation it can deliver to everyone means having the structures and
organization in place to tap it fully.
* Is based on open standards, or protocols and formats that are moving
toward standardization, that are independent of their implementation :
Cloud computing is still a relatively nascent technology. As such,standardization in the sense of “official” standards blessed by standards
bodies is still in early days. That said, approaches to interoperability
that aren’t under the control of individual vendors and that aren’t tied
to specific platforms offer important flexibility. This allows the API
specification to evolve beyond implementation constraints and creates
the opportunity for communities and organizations to develop variants
that meet their individual technical and commercial requirements.
* Gives you the freedom to use IP : Recent history has repeatedly shown
that there are few guarantees when a company owns IP on which you
depend. Even if using some piece of proprietary IP is, today, tacitly
tolerated, there are no guarantees for tomorrow in the event of a change
of ownership or financial situation. The only guarantee is to use technology
that is free from any required or potentially required licenses or other
restrictions. So-called “de facto standards,” which are often “standards”
only insofar as they are promoted by a large vendor, often fail this test.
For more information on characteristics click here
To watch the webinar of Open Cloud click here
For more information on Redhat Open Cloud click on RedHat Logo 
