The OAGi community started a cloud computing initiative a last month. The community was concerned that cloud computing, like many new technologies, suffers from a lack of standards.
Where standards efforts are occurring, the focus is on technical standards, not data standards. A well known technical expert, David Linthicum, recently wrote an article about the danger of creating silos in the cloud as we have with other technologies, unless we address the standards issue as a technology community.
The good news for data standards is that in a recent survey, 11% of respondents said they were already using OAGIS in the cloud!
In order to ensure that the OAGIS data standard fully enables our community to leverage cloud computing, we have initiated technical research. Our early work has identified some changes to the OAGIS architecture that will improve the support for cloud computing and lay the groundwork for further evolution as cloud computing evolves.
Some of this work could appear in OAGIS as early as Release 9.5, which is scheduled for release in the spring of 2010.
We will be talking about this more at our upcoming Plenary session on December 1 in Redwood City, California, near San Francisco. For more details on that meeting you can go here. All are welcome to attend.
