State Of Cloud Platform Standards: Q1 2014

Enterprises look to cloud computing services to enable flexibility and scalability for agile applications, but many fear vendor lock-in, which would mitigate these benefits. Without standardization, applications, products, and entire businesses can be vulnerable to the success and decisions of a single vendor. As Forrester stated in 2011, standards development organizations (SDOs) will try to set standards, and market leaders and open source solutions will create de facto standards that together will influence the overall standards set in a particular area. This report serves as an update to our Q4 2011 report on cloud platform standards, not a replacement, as most of the original report is still applicable. Overall de facto standards set by early market leaders continue to rule the day, while SDOs release their first legitimate standards. OpenStack will become a new de facto standard by the end of 2014.