With multiple cloud platforms with their individual management interfaces – both web and CLI, it is getting harder to keep with the capability & features of each of the services they provide, even to keep up with the range of services offered in the first place. While 3-4 major cloud platforms are surfacing as industry leaders, there are others in the game as well thus, adding to the sheer amount of it. Its all the more important as more and more enterprises are moving to hybrid cloud solutions consuming more than 1 of these platforms to host their applications. There are enough drivers for going hybrid cloud too – avoid vendor lock-in, leverage best-in-class from wherever its available etc.

I believe we need, at this point, some standardization is required – of the services offered as well as the capabilities offered by those services. This will not only bring operational ease but also act as a good measuring stick of the service maturity of these platforms. Services referring to all cloud models – infrastructure, platform & containers (excluding Software-as-a-service and Solution-as-a-service which may not involve the same kind of management & operation).

This standards should include –

  1. Services specifications for each service type to enable classification a cloud provider service into model and type e.g. runtimes, data store, network etc.
  2. Service Maturity Model with detailed capability/feature set for each of the service type to enable assessment of cloud provider service
  3. Interface specification for service and features for enabling uniform and unified tools to manage and operate multiple cloud platforms

Thoughts?