Open Virtual Format

Last week, a rising cloud standard, OVF, was accepted as an international standard by ISO.  OVF (Open Virtual Format) is a hypervisor independent format for packaging virtual machines, storage, networks, and applications. A service packaged with OVF is transported from one cloud to another like a standard shipping container is moved from cargo ship to railroad car without disturbing the contents. Just like shipping containers revolutionized shipping, OVF has the potential to raise cloud computing to the next level. Standard packaging like OVF will be a cornerstone of interoperability between cloud implementations, both public and private. Using OVF packages a cloud consumer or broker is able to package services so they can easily be moved from provider to provider. As OVF becomes an international standard, the industry moves another step toward a new level of interoperability.

The Standards Process

The acceptance of OVF by the ISO/IEC is also an important milestone for cloud computing. The DMTF, Distributed Management Task Force, is a standards body formed of member companies and organizations that include CA Technologies, Cisco, EMC, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and many other organizations prominent in enterprise computing. The 160 members are international, spanning 43 countries, and they convene in working groups to follow a rigorous and transparent process to develop open standards for interoperable IT management. Standards such as the Common Information Model (CIM), Web Services Management (WS-MAN), and Configuration Management Database Federation (CMDBf) all came from the DMTF. Lately, the Cloud Management Working Group has been working on a standard interface for managing Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud deployments.

If you are not familiar with the standards process, it can be confusing. Fundamentally, there are three tiers of open standards. The first tier is standard development organizations (SDOs). Generally, these not-for-profit industry organizations like the DMTF have established a process for developing standards. Participation must be open; every qualified voice must be heard. The process is designed to be transparent with results that are scrupulously correct and unambiguous. The first tier of independent standards bodies is often where standards are drafted, although not always. In the case of OVF, the "DMTF System Virtualization, Partitioning, and Clustering Working Group" wrote the specification.

I blogged that the American National Standards Institute accepted OVF as an ANSI standard about a year ago. ANSI represents the second tier of standards organizations, a national standards organization (NSO). Countries usually only have a single designated NSO. Sometimes NSOs are government agencies, in other cases, like ANSI, they are independent organizations. ANSI is a non-profit private organization supported by private organizations and government agencies. ANSI maintains rigorous guidelines for standards development. By meeting these standards, the DMTF was able to advance OVF to the level of an ANSI national standard.

The next step was to make OVF an international standard. The International Organization for Standardization (abbreviated ISO) works with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) on information technology standards. The ISO/IEC is an association of NSOs that develops and publishes international standards. Unlike ANSI, which seldom writes standards itself, the ISO/IEC often writes their own standards.  OVF, however, was a fast track standard and not rewritten by ISO/IEC because it was thoroughly vetted by ANSI and was accepted by the ISO/IEC membership without rewrites.

The Meaning of ISO/IEC Acceptance

Acceptance as an international standard is important because it widens the circle of NSOs and SDOs that acknowledge the standard and adds the weight of their judgment to the validity of the document. Through the ISO/IEC, more developers and organizations will be aware of the standard and able to implement it.

For standards, acceptance is as important as technical validity. A standard that is not implemented may be a superb technical achievement, but with no implementations, is has no proven value. International acceptance is an important step toward wider implementation and a step toward realizing the promise held by cloud computing.

The OVF standard is available from the ISO Catalog or the IEC Webstore . If you don't need an official ISO/IEC copy, download the DMTF version with identical technical content as DSP0243 from the DMTF site. For additional information, the DMTF OVF Standard page has helpful white papers and other documents.