Standards: From containers to clouds

In this morning’s keynote session we heard from both David Wallom and Alan Sill about OGF’s work in developing standards for use in both grids and clouds.

OGF’s ultimate aim is to achieve open international standards. OGF’s role in the community is to identify and align requirements. Therefore any developed standards are community based and globally oriented. But most importantly they’re meant for adoption!

Standards gone wrong

In his talk David gave the example of the shipping container as a global standard that has made a major impact on industry worldwide. The container is also a great example of a standard that has been taken and used for completely different communities – to construct student accommodation or hotels for example. And even though from time to time it does raise problems, we’ve learnt to work around them and haven’t just decided to throw the whole thing out.

With e-Infrastructures it often seem the case that the persistent will get the best research. Earlier keynotes from Sheila Anderson and David Manset gave examples on how communities in the humanities and neurosciences have really made good use of e-infrastructure for their needs. However as David Wallom said, we’re aiming to reach a place where using e-infrastructures become as normal as using email. He forsees a time when we’ll no longer talk about e-research, but simply research. However to achieve this usability is a key factor and should be built into all tools as standard.

The OGF community encompasses reserchers, resource providers, tools and infrastructure developers. But they want to hear from you about what your requirements are. What would you like OGF to be putting into their roadmap, adding to their pipeline and discussing in their working groups? Let them know!