OpenNebula has emerged as a viable open source alternative to commercial cloud management solutions. A number of companies are adopting OpenNebula in their IT infrastructure. Not only that, it is also been actively promoted by the European Commission as the basis for numerous cloud computing related research. There is a real need for interaction and exchange of ideas between such projects and the industry partners alike. The OpenNebula Interoperability Working Group has been established to facilitate such an exchange.

A lot of effort is being spent by various working groups in coming up with standards for cloud platform management. Open Cloud Computing Interface (OCCI), Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI), and Open Virtualization Format (OVF) are among the major open standards being developed for standardizing cloud management interfaces and cloud applications packaging. A lot of upcoming European projects that plan on using OpenNebula also have plans to support some of these open standards. A major thrust area of this working group will be to ensure maximum interoperability in the interfaces being developed by such projects.

The first interoperability working group teleconference took place on September 07 2011. Attending organizations included INRIA, OW2, UCM, XLab, and TU Dortmund. Other prominent research groups will be invited very soon to join in this interoperability effort. Hopefully, as a result of this working group’s effort, extensibility and re-usability of OpenNebula ecosystem products will be vastly improved.

Recently, we decided to make this group’s mailing list open to public. OpenNebula ecosystem members and users are invited to participate and follow the activities of this working group. The Interoperability mailing list will remain the primary mode of information dissemination. Periodic posts along with interesting how-to, API documentations, project showcases will be made available on the working group’s Wiki page.