LongJump, along with companies like Akamai, AMD, AT&T, Cisco, CSC, EMC, IBM, Red Hat, SAP, Sun Microsystems and VMWare, proudly joins the Open Cloud Manifesto, the first step in defining vendor-neutral interoperability standards for cloud based platforms.

The manifesto defines cloud computing as:

• Scalability on Demand
• Streamlining the Data Center
• Improving Business Processes
• Minimizing Startup Costs

It also lists the challenges of adopting cloud computing in real-world business environments including:

• Security
• Data and Application Interoperability
• Data and Application Portability
• Governance and Management
• Metering and Monitoring

The goals of the manifesto is to promote:

• Choice
• Flexibility
• Speed and Agility
• Skills

And as cloud computing matures, there are several key principles that the manifesto hopes to address to ensure the cloud is open and delivers the choice, flexibility and agility organizations demand. We are eager to work with other cloud providers to ensure that the challenges to cloud adoption (security, integration, portability, interoperability, governance/management, metering/monitoring) are addressed through open collaboration and the appropriate use of standards. The goal for vendors should be to not use their market position to lock customers into their particular platforms. We also recognize that all platforms must try to adopt existing standards wherever appropriate while also helping to define new standards that promote innovation.