Who Owns Application Delivery Meta-Data In the Cloud?

Random Feature writes "The Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum (CCIF) is currently discussing cloud portability specifications. It seems crazy to define a standard before we even know who owns what in the cloud because you can only port what you own. For example, if you created a security or acceleration policy for your cloud computing-based app, is the policy yours or the provider's? Who owns meta-data in the cloud?" True portability between clouds seems to hang on the answer.

Comments

so... what is the meta data, exactly?

[Animaether]

I'm a complete n00b when it comes to 'cloud computing', but given that the article (behind the 2nd link) starts out to explain that nobody's really sure what 'cloud computing' is just yet, I guess I can't help but shrug at that fact.

I did try to read through the thinly-veiled press release article, but at the end... I'm still unsure what the meta data is.

Say I have a 'cloud computing' app that is uhh.. a bouncing ball. Yes, it shows on the screen of the app user a bouncing ball. That'll do.

Now that app is mine. I can take it from one provider to another (assuming they run the same apps - I suppose a standard would have to define that).
    Now let's say the provider has options to, say, limit access to that app to a certain IP range. Certainly that's meta-data, right? It's not inherent to the app, it's not crucial to the app's workings, it's just additional data related to the app. Is that data mine? I would certainly say so. I go into the provider's control panel, hit 'limit access', enter the IP addresses... I don't think they can claim that the data I entered is now suddenly the provider's to own, and taking that particular meta-data from that provider and to another provider (presuming they have a limit-by-ip thing) shouldn't be any trouble. Again, a standard may apply here for some common tasks/options and exporting this to a common file format (and I really don't care if that's plaintext, XML, a BLOB or whatever - as long as everybody can read/write them) so it can be imported by another provider would be nice.
    But the article seems to be about a bunch of people -at the provider- having a peek at your app and making tweaks in their own 'cloud' to make your app be delivered faster, be delivered more securely, etc. I fail to see how -that- meta-data is yours to own. The 'cloud' isn't yours, the tweaks made to the cloud aren't yours, etc. So maybe you paid them to make those optimizations, great, so pay the people at the other provider to make changes too. That's one of the perils of changing providers / relying on their tweaks in any such business.
    I don't think that not having that meta-data breaks portability, though - it just means your app may not be delivered as fast, or as securely.. your problem for choosing an inferior 'cloud computing' provider.

But, again, maybe one of those 'industry moguls' in the arena of cloud computing can explain what the problem actually seems to be.

Welcome to the 70ies

[DUdsen]

Since there isn't a cloud it's all nonsense, there's a good old fashioned mainframe operator and a customer using the system the law and contracting models for those was laid down in the 70ies and just because the 3270 have given way to the AJAX enabled browser and everyone is talking community we don't have a different situation.

Stop treating the cloud as if it was something unknown and start realising how much it's just the successor to the mainframe and thing stats making sense.

Re:Welcome to the 70ies

[aix tom]

Yep. It's basically the same principle from a technology point of view.

The difference is that 90% of mainframe users understood at least the basic principles of the technology they needed.

These days you can't just sell or rent people the technology they need, you have to wrap it in marketing speech and buzzwords so that they get clouds of happy smoke, too. ;-P

And the "application metadata" they talk about in the article basically just looks like the thing that is done during "installation" on traditional system. E.g. "tuning" the cloud so that the application runs smoothly and securely looks basically just like creating the right users with the right permissions and right ulimits and setting up various parameters of the OS correctly when you install an traditional application on a traditional OS.

So it would seem, if the creator of the application also writes the stuff that is needed to install the application, whether it's a traditional "install script" or "application meta-data" happy smoke, then it is his.

When he doesn't know how to do it and asks the provider to install and tweak his application, then that additional metadata belongs to the providers, and the provider shouldn't have to give that away for free.