Welcome!

Cloud Expo Authors: Maureen O'Gara, Kevin Benedict, Derek Harris, Pat Romanski, Francois Lascelles

Related Topics: Cloud Expo

Cloud Expo: Blog Post

RumorMill: Amazon to Open Web Services API's?

I usually try to avoid posting rumors but this one is particularly interesting

I usually try to avoid posting rumors but this one is particularly interesting, I first heard about it a few weeks back but recently had independent confirmation. Word is Amazon's legal team is currently "investigating" open sourcing their various web services API's including EC2, S3 etc. (The rumor has not been officially confirmed by Amazon, but my sources are usually pretty good)

If true, this move makes a lot of sense for a number of reasons. The first and foremost is it would help foster the adoption of Amazon's API's which are already the de facto standards used by hundreds of thousands of AWS customers around the globe thus solidifying Amazons position as the market leader.

By actually giving their stamp of approval, they would be in a sense officially giving the opportunity for other players to embrace the interface methods while keeping the actual implementation (their secret sauce) a secret. If anything this may really help Amazon win over Enterprise customers by enabling an ecosystem of compatible "private cloud" products and services that could seamlessly move between Amazon's Public Cloud and existing data center infrastructure.

This would also continue the momentum started by a number of competitors/partners who have begun adopting the various AWS API's including Sun Microsystems in their Open Cloud Platform and the EUCALYPTUS project.

From a legal standpoint this would help negate some of the concerns around API liability. Amazon is known to have an extensive patent portfolio and in past has not been afraid to enforce it. A clear policy regarding the use of their API's would certainly help companies that up until now have been reluctant to adopt them.
David Berlind on twitter asked a great question: "Can Amazon actually "open source" an API? Or, with APIs, is Creative Commons or a Non-Assertion Covenant the way to go?"

Lastly this provides the opportunity to foster a ecosystem of API driven applications to emerge (

EUCALYPTUS is perfect example). Another possible opportunity I wrote about awhile back is the creation of a Universal EC2 API adapter (UEC2) that could plug into your existing infrastructure tools and is completely platform agnostic.

At the heart of this concept is a universal EC2 abstraction, similar to ODBC, (a platform-independent database abstraction layer). Like ODBC a user could install the specific EC2 api-implementation, through which a lightweight EC2 API daemon (Think Libvirt) is able to communicate with traditional virtual infrastructure platforms such as VMware, Xen, Hyper-V etc using a standardized EC2 API. The user then has the ability to have their EC2 specific applications communicate directly with any infrastructure using this EC2 Adapter. The adapter then relays the results back and forth between the the other various infrastructure platforms & API's. Maybe it's time for me to get moving on this concept.

May a thousand Clouds Bloom.

More Stories By Reuven Cohen

Reuven Cohen is Founder & CTO for Toronto based Enomaly Inc. - leading developer of Cloud Computing products and solutions focused on enterprise businesses. Enomaly's products include the Enomaly elastic computing platform, an open source cloud platform that enables a scalable enterprise IT and local cloud infrastructure platform. Cohen is a thought leader in the emerging cloud computing industry and maintains a blog at www.elasticvapor.com.

Reuven is also founder of several technology organizations;
Enomaly.com - Elastic Computing Platform (Cloud Computing),
Cloud Camp - Local Cloud Computing events,
the Unified Cloud Interface Project - Semantic Cloud Abstraction API
Cloud Interoperability Forum - Cloud Standards Group.

(twitter @ruv : Linkedin : RSS Feed)

Cloud Expo Breaking News
Why are APIs so important in clouds? Do APIs have to be open? How fast or slow will standardization in the cloud be? Why is ensuring high availability for the cloud service critical? In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Mårten Mickos, CEO of Eucalyptus Systems, will answer these questions and address cloud standards, APIs and the critical question: Will we end up with one, two or more competing cloud standards? And, how will this affect the evolution and adoption of cloud comput...
Very few trends in IT have generated as much buzz as cloud computing. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Mark Hinkle, Director, Cloud Computing Community at Citrix, will cut through the hype and quickly clarify the ontology for cloud computing. The bulk of the conversation will focus on the open source software that can be used to build compute clouds (infrastructure-as-a-service) and the complementary open source management tools that can be combined to automate the management...
The proliferation of device connectivity is redefining the functionality requirements and capabilities of many embedded systems as more and more of these devices look to leverage the “Cloud.” While many commercial software and hardware component vendors have begun to realign their value propositions to satisfy growing demand, commercial-off-the-shelf products (COTS) alone cannot meet every OEM’s needs. As a result, the Embedded Cloud has injected a new level of uncertainty and a new competitive ...
Hardware and chemistry improvements will make the $1,000 human genome a reality soon. While the massive amount of genomics data that will be generated represents a huge opportunity to advance personal medicine, it also presents an enormous big data challenge. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Dr Andreas Sundquist, CEO of DNAnexus, will discuss how the cloud will address these issues by enabling the management, storage, sharing and analysis of the world’s DNA data and how it ...
With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) just four months away, what better time to start introducing you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference... We have technical and strategy sessions for you every day from June 11 through June 14 dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else h...
With Big Data Expo 2012 New York (co-located with 10th Cloud Expo) just four months away, what better time to start introducing you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference...
In 2011, Apache Hadoop received tremendous attention for helping organizations cost-effectively capitalize on their big data. Hadoop is now disrupting the business of analyzing data. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Eric Baldeschwieler, Co-Founder & CEO of Hortonworks, will look at the current state of the Hadoop project, lessons learned by deploying it at scale, and the roadmap for its future. Big Data Track attendees will learn about the exciting developments that have ...
The focus of Java EE 7 is on the cloud, and specifically it aims to bring Platform-as-a-Service providers and application developers together so that portable applications can be deployed on any cloud infrastructure and reap all its benefits in terms of scalability, elasticity, multitenancy, etc. The existing specifications in the platform such as JPA, Servlets, EJB, and others will be updated to meet these requirements. Java EE 7 continues the ease of development push that characterized prior ...
With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) just four months away, what better time to start introducing you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference... We have technical and strategy sessions for you every day from June 11 through June 14 dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else h...
With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) just four months away, what better time to start introducing you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference... We have technical and strategy sessions for you every day from June 11 through June 14 dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else h...