Data Backup Digest

Given the sudden popularity boom of cloud computing services, it was only a matter of time before we started to see some standardization amongst applications, services and protocols. As such, it should come as no surprise that The Linux Foundation, in coordination with many other industry giants, have come together to form Cloud Native Computing Foundation as a means of regulating deployment utilities in Linux containers.

Jim Zemlin, executive director with The Linux Foundation, spoke excitedly about the announcement. He was quoted as saying: “The Cloud Native Computing Foundation will help facilitate collaboration among developers and operators on common technologies for deploying cloud native applications and services. By bringing together the open source community’s very best talent and code in a neutral and collaborative forum, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation aims to advance the state of the art of application development at Internet scale.”

Linux containers, which originated in the mid-2000s as an alternative to machine virtualization, are meant to operate isolated applications within a single physical server. Once a highly complex process, utilities from organizations such as Docker, IBM, VMware, Intel and even IBM have helped to simplify the implementation and day-to-day usage of Linux containers. The newly introduced Cloud Native Computing Foundation has been put in place as a means of governing such containers.

According to the initial announcement, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation will consist of a technical oversight committee as well as an advisory board made up of end users. Additional details of the group, including its structure, have yet to be released to the public.

However, the public has been made aware of the 22 different groups who have partnered to form the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. The group includes Google, IBM, Intel, AT&T, Cisco, Box, CoreOS, Docker, eBay, Red Hat, Twitter, VMware, Weaveworks, Huawei, Joyent, Kismatic, Cycle Computing, Cloud Foundry, Univa, Goldman Sachs, Supernap and Mesosphere among its ranks.

Dr. Angel Diaz, vice president of Cloud Architecture and Technology with IBM, explained his company’s purpose within the Cloud Native Computing Foundation by saying: “Growing, maintaining and rapidly expanding container and micro-service based applications across multiple clouds is a challenge without standards. The creation of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation reaffirms IBM's long standing commitment to community driven open source answers to tough problems and we look forward to making contributions in support of containers and other open technologies as we deliver class leading container services through our Bluemix infrastructure.”

Kit Colbert, vice president and CTO of Cloud-Native Apps with VMware, also expressed his support for the new group by saying: “Customers will benefit from the community’s collaboration via the Cloud Native Computing Foundation which will help to define common cloud native computing APIs, tools and frameworks. We are excited to work with the community to extend VMware’s software-defined data center offerings to support open technologies resulting from the foundation and beyond.”

If you are interested in finding out more information about the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, including details on any of the group’s founders or partners, please visit their official website at www.cncf.io.