Intel and the Open Data Center Alliance

As the Internet continues to grow and pose new challenges, the latest one being the Cloud, it became necessary to form an independent consortium put together by Intel. It has over 70 global IT managers with a mission to resolve key IT challenges and fulfill cloud infrastructure needs. They hope to do it by creating an open, vendor-neutral Usage Model Roadmap, through an organization called the Open Data Center Alliance.

As the Internet continues to grow and pose new challenges, the latest one being the Cloud, it became necessary to form an independent consortium put together by Intel. It has over 70 global IT managers with a mission to resolve key IT challenges and fulfill cloud infrastructure needs. They hope to do it by creating an open, vendor-neutral Usage Model Roadmap, through an organization called the Open Data Center Alliance.

By 2015, when the cloud is set to make significant inroads, there should be major population growth that will affect the Internet. There should be another 15 billion devices on the Internet in 2015. Therefore, the Cloud 2015 vision put forth by the Data Center Alliance is to simplify virtual computing. They will pursue a three-pronged approach to reach that goal. First, there will be Federated data, so clients can share data, more securely and with fewer problems like data corruption. Then, there should be more automated efficiency, i.e., moving data around should be easier. Finally, the cloud should be “client-aware,” which means that the cloud API must be device aware, taking into account whether a user is on a phone or on a laptop. Communication between the players will be key in achieving the initiative’s goals of increased efficiency and decreased IT spending.

The design comes from the Usage Model Roadmap, which defines usage model requirements and reference architectures to resolve key IT challenges, as well as fulfill cloud infrastructure needs.