Forrester

Why Read This Report

Thirty-six firms have signed on in support of the Open Cloud Manifesto that was published on March 29, 2009, with IBM taking a strong role in driving the document and promoting its launch. The goal of the Manifesto's authors is to establish principles of openness, in many dimensions, across the landscape of cloud concepts. A rushed process and simple, idealistic language with little detail are at least some of the reasons why major players such as Amazon.com, Google, Microsoft, and salesforce.com aren't on the initial list of Manifesto supporters. Although the Manifesto is a laudable first industry step, its ideals are not a good guide for vendor strategists struggling with a broad spectrum of ideas and offerings under the cloud label, which spans everything from consumer Web-based services to IT infrastructure-as-a-service. In fact, some aspects of cloud services will never lend themselves to the full openness the Manifesto suggests. Vendor strategists need to examine the business and technology issues carefully to determine where the Manifesto's ideas of openness are worthy and where it would undermine substantial business opportunities.