David Mitchell SmithMy colleague Lydia Leong weighed in on a raging controversy in the blogosphere on whether a Cloud requires an API or not. This is something that has a pretty simple answer. Deriving from thoughts and works on what we originally called web platform, (now cloud platform), a cloud (or the public cloud) need not have APIs, but for there to be a cloud platform there had better be one. after all, it is extension and the ability to build upon and provide access to the underlying capabilities and services that effectively defines a platform – a long potential discussion that i won’t go into here.
Cloud platforms can exist at multiple levels, including the low level infrastructure services typified by EC2. they can also exist at higher levels. but IMHO, it seems like a pretty simple answer to the question about API requirements for Cloud. yes for cloud platforms or services, no for the bigger concept of cloud.
What do you think?
Category: Uncategorized Tags: cloud, platform
1 response so far ↓
1 Chris April 1, 2009 at 2:36 am
Good point! The folks at cloudstoragestrategy.com defined cloud storage as
“storage accessed over a network (internal or external) via Web Services APIs.”
http://cloudstoragestrategy.com/2009/03/defining-cloud-storage.html