Choosing a cloud API in a non-standardized world

Whether you use a public cloud service provider or maintain a private cloud, you are faced with the task of managing server instances. With Infrastructure as a Service, IT teams create and manage instances and perform load balancing and storage management using a control panel and an API. But different cloud vendors provide different APIs. With no standard cloud API in sight, how can IT pros maintain control and compatibility with current and future cloud services?

Several organizations have attempted to create a standard API for cloud computing. The Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), for example, has an initiative to create standards for clouds; its draft specification is called the Cloud Infrastructure Management Interface (CIMI) Model and REST Interface over HTTP.

Even though several working groups are committed to developing a standard cloud API, standards only partially exist and vendor support is limited.
The European organization ETSI has published several studies regarding cloud technologies as well as some early APIs that apply more to grid computing than cloud computing. And Open Grid Forum produced a cloud-specific API; however, it’s only partially complete, as it doesn’t offer any monitoring or billing methods. Specifications for those features are in progress.

SimpleCloud, an organization headed by Zend Technologies that includes Microsoft and Rackspace, has created the basic Simple Cloud API.

While these moves demonstrate the industry is making some progress, as with any standards work, not all vendors are on board. Amazon Web Services (AWS), for example, has spent years developing a proprietary infrastructure and cloud API and has little incentive to switch to an industry standard. Other cloud vendors have developed their own standards, including ElasticHosts API, FlexiScale API, GoGrid API and SunCloud API. Additionally, OpenStack, the open source cloud software from Rackspace, is an entire infrastructure -- not just an API -- that’s gaining steam.

Centralizing cloud management and source libraries
A few companies have produced their own Web-based cloud instance management products, which are cloud vendor-agnostic. RightScale, for example, has a management console that provides a single API and a management console that works with multiple cloud vendors.

Several cloud developers strayed from building a standard API and, instead, offer a library that supports large cloud players and provides a simple API. Functioning like a translator, the library allows programmers to target an API and then specify which cloud vendor they want to use.

Apache Deltacloud is an open source cloud library that communicates with numerous hosted cloud platforms, including Amazon, Rackspace, GoGrid and RimuHosting, as well as a private cloud that’s built using OpenStack and VMware vSphere. Similarly, jclouds provides a single API that supports most major cloud vendors, including AWS as well as vendors that implement OpenStack.

ImageGear for .NET and Silverlight Add Cloud Capture

Accusoft, the leading provider of document, content and imaging solutions, announces the release of ImageGear for .NET v19.4 and ImageGear for Silverlight v19.3 with Cloud capture technology.

Enterprises and software vendors are continuously looking for ways to lower the costs of software development and distribution. Traditional document capture solutions have prevented many enterprises form taking advantage of these savings in their applications. The ability to enable document capture in web applications can reduce the number of applications an organization needs to build and maintain lowering development costs, and freeing up developers for other projects.

"The latest updates to ImageGear give our customers the ability to migrate document scanning applications to a web deployed application," said Russ Puskaric, Vice President of Sales and Marketing of Accusoft. "As more businesses are transitioning to web based applications, ImageGear for .NET and ImageGear for Silverlight provide the tools needed to take advantage of this new and pioneering way of distributing applications."

Scanning documents into web applications is problematic with traditional scanning technologies because they generally require a desktop application or use of an ActiveX control. ImageGear's new Cloud capture technology gives web applications full control of the scanner and its capabilities through a local web service. This enables the creation of a true zero footprint document capture web application.

Using ImageGear's ASP.NET and ISIS Cloud capture functionality, web application developers can provide a seamless customer experience for document capture and display. The ImageGear for .NET toolkit provides developers with all of the controls required to build a robust HTML5 based image display and capture application.

Cloud Computing with Microsoft , Google and Amazon

Cloud computing is Internet-based (“cloud”) development and use of computer technology (”computing“). The cloud is a metaphor for the Internet (based on how it is depicted in computer network diagrams) and is an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it conceals.[1] It is a style of computing in which IT-related capabilities are provided “as a service”,[2] allowing users to access technology-enabled services from the Internet (”in the cloud”)[3] without knowledge of, expertise with, or control over the technology infrastructure that supports them. According to a 2008 paper published by IEEE Internet Computing “Cloud Computing is a paradigm in which information is permanently stored in servers on the Internet and cached temporarily on clients that include desktops, entertainment centers, table computers, notebooks, wall computers, handhelds, sensors, monitors, etc.”

Cloud computing is a general concept that incorporates software as a service (SaaS), Web 2.0 and other recent, well-known technology trends, in which the common theme is reliance on the Internet for satisfying the computing needs of the users.

Microsoft , Google and Amazon has already launch their platform which worked base on the Cloud Computing Architecture. Microsoft Azure Platform , Google Apps Engine and Amazon Web Service are most reasonable example of Cloud Computing .

There are similarities. However, Azure supports any .NET 3.5 language (C#, VB.NET, F# and a number of others), whereas App Engine only supports Python. In addition Microsoft has already announced that eventually you will be able to run native code on Azure opening the door to almost any Language/Framework that runs in Windows (e.g. Java, PERL, PHP).

Google App Engine doesn’t provide local storage. Azure does (although it’s not shared across instances, you have to use the Azure Storage Service for that). I’m not sure what ancillary offerings Google has beside app engine, but Azure provides a number of services above and beyond the hosting service including

* SQL Data (and soon to be Reporting and Analysis) services,
* .NET Services (WF, WCF and Identity services in the cloud),
* Live Framework (too much there for words)

I’m pretty sure I’m missing something there, but it’s 2 in the morning. Basically the big deal here is that Azure has a lot to offer that GAE is lacking currently, and will have more to offer in the upcoming months. So yes it is equal to GAE…and then some.

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