SODA Foundation expands cloud data autonomy plans
Cloud
At the virtual Open Source Summit, The Linux Foundation announced the SODA Foundation, formerly OpenSDS, is adding open-source software and standards to its efforts to support data autonomy. It will do this by hosting an open-source, unified, and autonomous data management framework for data mobility from core to cloud to edge.
The idea of data autonomy is to give you the power to maintain control of your data, no matter where it lives. With data autonomy, your data can be stored and used no matter where it resides: On-premise, public, hybrid, multi-cloud. In addition, it will let you manage it securely with granular data access control. This will enable your company to be data-agile, so you can respond to sudden shifts in the market, new opportunities, and unforeseen threats quickly, without losing data or services.
There's long been a need for a unified open-source data management solution for clouds. SODA hopes to solve this problem.
As part of this shift, China Unicom is contributing its open-source AWS S3-compatible object storage YIG project to the SODA Foundation. YIG is the first in a line of projects joining the Foundation through the SODA Incubator program.
The SODA Foundation also announced the release of Faroe. This is the 1.0 version of its open unified data framework software for cloud-native and other cloud platforms. It comes with block, file, and object storage and multi-cloud data control, telemetry, and resource management across heterogeneous storage. By doing so, Faroe is designed to eliminate data silos, deliver integrated data management, and enables seamless data mobility between on-premise and multi-cloud. As an experimental feature, Faroe also includes Container Storage Interface (CSI) storage plug-and-play that simplifies Kubernetes storage management by abstracting CSI storage with SODA.
Steven Tan, SODA Foundation's chairman and VP and CTO of Cloud Solution at Futurewei, stated the Foundation provides a "neutral forum where both vendors and end-users can contribute to building and integrating data management solutions for mobility and autonomy is our goal."
Data management between clouds, on-premise and, increasingly, the edge, is growing ever more complex. The result is more data silos than ever. Simultaneously, data mobility and autonomy is more important than ever. It's hoped that by simplifying management, unifying storage pools, and providing a vendor-neutral forum the SODA Foundation can break these silos for good.
"With data privacy and treatment at the top of every company's priority list, the SODA Foundation serves an important role across industries," said Mike Dolan, Linux Foundation's vice president of strategic programs. "With new membership commitments, from vendors and end-users alike, and an expanded scope to integrate software and standards, we believe this community will have an incredible impact in the coming months and years."
Rakesh Jain, SODA Foundation board member and researcher and architect at IBM, added: "Managing the data coming from heterogeneous sources and formats is an interesting problem along with the regulatory requirements. SODA foundation attempts to address these challenges in an open manner which would help companies build reliable AI-enabled solutions."