White paper highlights adoption of ODCA Cloud Usage models

The Open Data Center Alliance: Private Cloud Strategy at BMW white paper details BMW's multiple phases of cloud implementation from internal cloud delivery to full integration of public cloud services using ODCA requirements as core foundations for implementation plans. The paper is expected to serve as a model for helping other enterprise IT managers in their own path to the cloud and help providers identify requirements for enterprise ready cloud service delivery. A video featuring highlights of the BMW cloud implementation was has also been released.

"Cloud computing represents an unparalleled opportunity to deliver resiliency and scale to meet our business challenges," said Mario Mueller, chair of the Open Data Center Alliance and Vice President of IT Infrastructure at BMW. "By publishing BMW's strategy for cloud adoption, we hope to share our insights in how to integrate cloud principles into an existing enterprise IT environment leveraging our work in the Open Data Center Alliance. By sharing our path we hope to make everyone's path to the cloud smoother."

The BMW cloud implementation is grounded in the principles of the ODCA Compute Infrastructure as a Service and Service Orchestration master usage models, which provide the company with the strategy and tactics for moving from requirements to real implementation starting this year. Additional requirements integrated into BMW's plans include the ODCA Service Catalog to measure what services are being delivered and what attributes exist for each service; the VM Interoperability usage model, providing a single view of all corporate VMs regardless of physical location, and the Long-Distance Workload Migration usage modelaimed to eliminate downtime and disruption from migration activities. The company's approach to security and identity management is based on strategies and details described in the ODCA Identity Management Interoperability Guide.

The announcement of BMW's ODCA implementation plans come as the Alliance delivers a major advancement in cloud requirements with the release of two new usage models:

- Software Entitlement Management Framework: This usage model addresses the requirement for shifting away from outmoded annual software licensing schema based on system or CPU core count metrics towards models that match cloud based delivery of on-demand services and dynamic scaling of resources.

- Data Security Framework: This usage model builds upon the existing ODCA security assurance usage model and focuses on security of corporate data. The requirement introduces attributes for data security including mechanisms for access control, data classification, data encryption, and data masking.

These usage models extend the Alliance's requirements delivery and help pave the way to broad scale deployments in 2013. ODCA will release new usage models at the organization's upcoming Forecast 2013 conference scheduled for June 17-18 in San Francisco aligned with Forecast's premier media sponsor Giga-Om's Structure conference.