Lets get back to business!!

[Philipp Huber]

Guys,

 

I am a great believer in interoperability and can see so many benefits from a commercial point (I am looking at this whole topic purely commercially, there is no ‘religious believe in Interop) of view even though many of the established vendors might secretly prefer things to stay proprietary as long as possible to benefit from a vendor locking – so overall, well done to put the effort into setting up and contributing to CCIF/UCI Forum.

 

However, as an active follower of the activities of the group I have become increasingly weary of recent trends and shifts in the dynamics within this group. Things have become very personal and sometimes rather aggressive which is certainly not in the spirit of Open Standards and/or Open Source. I think it is fair to say that the group is currently paralyzed.

 

Being a bit an older guy ... in IT terms J, may I remind people of some interesting parallels happening in the 90s. At that time, vendors (SCO, SGI, HP, SUN, DEC, IBM and more) got together because they wanted to unite the OS (Posix/Unix) and Middleware (Corba) space because they got increasingly scared of Microsoft as MS was eating more and more into their market shares. Good intentions! However, they behaved very much like this group like now, they argued FOREVER about stuff, everybody tried to move standards as close their ‘stuff’ so they would have a competitive edge, etc. Result? The standards got dusty on shelves, things were still not interoperable and Microsoft rolled over them in an unprecedented way with technology that was sooo inferior, it was hard to believe how this could have happened.  If this group is not careful, either Google / Amazon / VMware / Microsoft will repeat history by creating 1-2 proprietary standards that will become de-facto standards through their sheer market share/brand/marketing budgets and will totally ignore what CCIF/UCI will eventually achieve.

 

Personal agendas and pride need to make place to the willingness to come up with something that everybody can sign-up and feel comfortable with. This sometimes means that not the best solution gets selected but the one that finds the widest adoption. If means as well that existing stuff that can be extended or modified should be considered.

 

If the Group doesn’t find back on its feet quickly and gets its house in order, I can quite happily predict with a high level of certainty that things will eventually die a slow and painful death because key contributors will eventually lose interest to watch a few guys fighting personal battles out online and move their focus and activities somewhere else.

 

I REALLY hope we can get back to business and stop from repeating recent history. Wouldn’t it be cool, in a few years time, to talk to our kids about the origins of CCIF/UCI when they come home from Uni telling us that they are currently studying CCIF/UCI semantics!! I would defo feel pretty proud.

 

Let’s make it happen.

 

Philipp Huber

 

[Jason N. Meiers]

On that note, what is the next step for getting SEMP approved for Cloud Event Management? Suggestion: a vote.

[Reuven Cohen]

I have to concur with Philipp. The reason we created this group was as
an open and professional discussion on the opportunities that
interoperable cloud computing enables. That said, I am realistic, I
don't expect that we all agree, nor do I think we should always agree.

The one thing I know is that some ideas are good such as UCI (370
members signed up and hundreds more emailed me directly), while other
ideas -- well, are not so good (UEC2).

This group serves as a great idea peer review tool. If you're idea is
solid people will rally around it, if it's bad, just move on. No vote
required.

Ruv

[eprpa...@gmail.com]

I suggest you either convince the IETF to open up a applications level
group to study it or you go to the Grid group. But before you try you
might want to have people talking about it glowingly.

Chuck Wegrzyn

Jason N. Meiers wrote:
> On that note, what is the next step for getting SEMP approved for Cloud
> Event Management? Suggestion: a vote.
>
> On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 5:36 PM, Philipp Huber

> <philipp...@googlemail.com <mailto:philipp...@googlemail.com>>

[Alexis Richardson]

Jason,

There are many next steps. First you actually have to write it up in
any form that makes sense. Meanwhile, I suggest you stop posting to
this forum about SEMP for a while. I am sure you have good intentions
but you are not achieving traction.

Second, CCIF does not have a voting mechanism as such. There are open
questions like whether CCIF should team up with other standards bodies
in order to quickly develop a way to vote on things and draft
proposals, or whether CCIF should form its own ways of doing that.
Personally I lean towards the former. There are several other good
standards bodies forming, for example the OGF has formed a working
group around cloud interop, and the Eucalyptus guys appear to be
making good progress.

Note --- my only stake here is the attempt (possibly misguided) to
keep good order on this forum. I have no special stake in any one
standard for cloud.

alexis

[Jason N. Meiers]

That's fine no Open SEMP. You can't say I didn't try.

Thanks for your time. 

Best Regards,
Jason