Can the Open Data Center Alliance make a difference?
Back in October 2010 we reported on the formation of the Open Data Center Alliance by a group of large data center consumer companies with Intel, in what was described as a "unique advisory role", who wanted to become a driving force in getting technology vendors to deliver on products that met these business cloud computing goals. From Intel's perspective it was a forum to push their Cloud 2015 vision, as well.
When a press release crossed my desk today announcing a new Adopter member (a member who plans on using the ODCA Roadmap as a purchasing guideline), I thought I would take a look on what was happening with the alliance. And at first glance the answer seems to be "not much."
The first thing I noticed was absolutely no mention of Intel on the ODCA website; conversely, the only mention of the ODCA on Intel's website was in a few blog entries from last October, when the organization was announced. Of course, it's somewhat hard to tell if Intel's lack of obvious participation is a positive or a negative. On one hand, an alliance that is pushing a usage model which is customer-driven and vendor agnostic is probably best served if vendors aren't involved at the top levels of the organization. On the other hand, Intel's lack of participation could also be seen as a backhanded way of saying that they don't see the alliance as a viable way of pushing their Cloud 2015 vision.
Separate from the conspicuous absence of Intel from current Alliance information is the fact that in the six months since the formal launch announcement they have doubled their membership rolls to over 150 member companies. At launch time, they announced a version 0.5 of their ODCA Usage Models with a roadmap targeting the release of the first five Version 1.0 Usage Models as defined in their roadmap as Q1 of 2011. Q1 is over and those version 1.0 models don't seem to have yet appeared. Having delt with these types of groups in the past I well understand that experienced cat herders are often necessary to get results out of such groups. The ODCA has a good concept behind its formation; let's hope it has the necessary leadership to drive it to deliver on its promise.