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Open Data Center Alliance Adds HP, CA to Its Member Ranks
Matthew Weinberger
November 4, 2011
2 Min Read
open data center alliance
The Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA), the consortium of IT leaders dedicated to building more efficient data center and cloud hosting facility standards, announced some major milestones at its annual press event in New York. Long story short: The ODCA has signed partnerships with the Cloud Security Alliance and Distributed Management Task Force; HP and CA Technologies have signed on as members; and ODCA member adoption of the cloud is accelerating far past broad market rates.That’s a lot to take in, so let’s break it down, with details taken from the press release(s).
New Partnerships
The Cloud Security Alliance’s own Cloud Audit specifications align neatly with the ODCA’s Cloud Security Assurance and Monitoring usage models. The first wave of joint standards on the cloud security front will begin emerging in the first half of 2012, and the two alliances are expecting it to guide overall cloud security efforts going forward.
Meanwhile, the Distributed Management Task Force has been promoting its Open Virtualization Format (OVF) standard, and the ODCA will be adopting the format to help boost cloud portability and ease of migration. Those standards also are slated to be released in the first half of 2012.
New Members
HP and CA Technologies have joined the ODCA, giving the organization “more than 90 percent of virtualization software, two-thirds of server hardware, and the majority of data center storage, networking and management market leaders,” according to the ODCA.
The ODCA’s roster already includes Intel, Citrix, Red Hat, Dell, EMC, VMware and Parallels. And while I take the alliance’s numbers with a grain of salt, it’s clear that the big boys are playing ball.
New Momentum
The Open Data Center Alliance expects its members to triple cloud operations in the next two years alone — five times faster than most analysts peg the overall market.
Analyst firm IDC’s Matthew Eastwood had this to say in a prepared statement on that momentum:
“By bringing together leading edge cloud adopters and leading providers, and establishing collaborations with key standards bodies, the ODCA has created a central source to address the top challenges enterprises face in adoption of cloud. The organization has produced a unique opportunity for accelerated, customer prioritized innovation, which is reflected in this aggressive forecast of cloud adoption.”
In other words, Eastwood is saying that ODCA members are uniquely equipped to meet customer challenges.
And that’s that for the highlights. We’ll keep watching the Open Data Center Alliance closely as it continues to help data center operators move to the cloud, so stay tuned for more.
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