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Amazon not joining the Open Cloud Manifesto, either

It will be interesting to see who signs on to the Open Cloud Manifesto document that is circulating privately before the unveiling on March 30. Microsoft has made it clear that it has no intentions of backing the "secret document." Now Amazon has said publicly that it isn't planning to throw its weight behind the Manifesto, either.
Written by Mary Jo Foley, Senior Contributing Editor

It will be interesting to see who signs on to the Open Cloud Manifesto document that is circulating privately before the unveiling on March 30.

Update (March 30): The list of Open Cloud Manifesto backers is final. Neither Google nor Salesforce is on the list.

Microsoft has made it clear that it has no intentions of backing the "secret document." Now Amazon has said publicly that it isn't planning to throw its weight behind the Manifesto, either.

My ZDNet blogging colleague Larry Dignan has posted Amazon's statement. The synopsis: We already have a real, live cloud platform that developers are using and we're not going to rejigger it to comply with some cloudy set of standards.

Microsoft said earlier this week that it didn't like the "sign on the dotted line or else" nature of the proposed Manifesto. I'm curious whether there are specific provisions in the draft that the Softies have seen got their hackles up. I guessed it's probably the use of "open" in some way that Microsoft fears could be used against the company.... Microsoft officials have declined to provide any more details so far.

Data Center Knowledge has the clearest explanation I've seen so far as to what's going on behind the scenes in the cloud-standards backroom politics.

Update No. 1: Here's the actual Manifesto, for your reading pleasure.

Update No. 2: Directions on Microsoft researcher Matt Rosoff weighs in:

"In general, when organizations that consist primarily of for-profit companies talk about 'openness' and 'standards,' I am suspicious of their real motives. Moreover, there's no clear definition of the word 'open,' and even the term 'cloud computing' is unclear. Amazon already has an active business selling cloud computing services, and Microsoft's trying to build one. I'm not sure what they'd gain by joining this consortium.

"That said, there's a valid concern behind all this posturing: if developers choose to leverage one vendor's cloud system, it may be hard to switch later on. That's nothing new or surprising--it's the same situation with on-premise software. The trouble comes if these vendors don't take interoperability seriously. It's important that applications built on different cloud platforms can communicate and exchange data--that's why REST, SOAP, and other Web services are important."

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