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Materials Management

Notes They say the lack of standards could make cloud computing trickier to use. It could also
restrict implementation by limiting interoperability among cloud platforms and causing
inconsistency in areas such as security and interoperability. For example, the lack of
standardization could keep a customer trying to switch from a private to a public cloud
from doing so as seamlessly as switching browsers or e-mail systems. In addition, it
would keep users from knowing the basic capabilities they could expect from any cloud
service.
“Interoperability between offerings and the portability of services from one provider to
another is very important to the customer to maximize the expected [return on investment]
from cloud computing,” explained IBM vice president for software standards Angel Luis
Diaz. Moreover, interoperability would keep users from being locked into a single cloud
provider.
A lack of security standards – addressing issues such as data privacy and encryption – is
also hurting wider cloud-computing adoption, said Nirlay Kundu, senior manager at
Wipro Consulting Services.
With potentially sensitive information stored off-site and available only over the Internet,
security is a critical concern, explained Vishy Narayan, principal architect with the System
Integration Practice at Infosys Technologies, a vendor of consulting, technology,
engineering, and out-sourcing services.
According to Lynda Stadtmueller, program director for cloud computing at market research
firm Frost & Sullivan’s Stratecast practice, an effective lack of standardization makes it
difficult for buyers to compare and evaluate cloud offerings.
Of course, cloud computing is relatively young, so the lack of standardization - which
usually occurs with more mature technologies - is not altogether surprising. And some
experts say the market’s immaturity makes it too difficult for any one organization to
mandate standards.
There may be challenges to cloud-computing standardization along the way, and
overcoming them could determine just how bright cloud computing’s future will be, said
Winston Bumpus, director of standards architecture at VMware, a virtualisation and cloud
infrastructure vendor. He is also president of the Distributed Management Task Force
(DMTF), an industry-based standards consortium.

Source: http://www.infoq.com/articles/problem-with-cloud-computing-standardization
The important benefits of standardization are summarized as follows:
1. Standardization helps reduce inventory items,

2. It helps in evolving better means of communication about an item in the company,
3. It forms a base for further inventory analysis,
4. The specification of items can be more clearly spelt out, making quality control firm,
5. In a developing economy like ours, where the need is to promote exports, insistence on
standards helps in creating confidence in the international market.
By using national standards, it is easier to locate sources of supplies and in the case of machine
parts, the replacements can be obtained easily. It could also be used in advertising for the
products as well as spare parts.

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