Portable Cloud applications—From theory to practice

The adoption of the Cloud computing concept and its market development are nowadays hindered by the problem of application, data and service portability between Clouds. Open application programming interfaces, standards and protocols, as well as their early integration in the software stack of the new technological offers, are the key elements towards a widely accepted solution and the basic requirements for the further development of Cloud applications.An approach for a new set of APIs for Cloud application development is discussed in this paper from the point of view of portability. The first available, proof-of-the-concept, prototype implementation of the proposed API is integrated in a new open-source deployable Cloudware, namely mOSAIC, designed to deal with multiple Cloud usage scenarios and providing further solutions for portability beyond the API.

► Description of the concepts behind mOSAIC API and its positioning versus other similar initiatives. ► Analysis of the current approaches for portability of applications between Clouds. ► Exemplify the portability approaches through mOSAIC’s approach. ► Considerations on the architecture of Cloud applications. ► Experimental results highlighting the benefits of adopting a new architectural style for the Cloud applications.