Every organization/ business driving its digital transformation is increasingly moving towards cloud-based solutions these days. But interoperability and portability in the cloud systems are essential. So in this article, we will discuss the concept of interoperability and portability in cloud computing services. Also, we shall look at the idea that interoperability is a weakness in cloud computing. Let’s go a bit into the concept to get an overview of this cloud interoperability and portability.
Interoperability measures the degree to which diverse systems or components can work together successfully. It is defined as:
“General Interoperability is the capacity of at least two applications or ecosystems to trade with and utilize data.”
When two systems can work together or operate with each other, we say that the systems are Interoperable, which is called interoperability. One platform or system must understand other systems’ language of communication. It implies that a cloud must understand the message sent by another.
No more than two systems can establish communication between each other and can interoperate.
There must be direct communication between two systems to interoperate. They should establish this communication without a medium/mediator.
If an organization uses two different applications developed by two developers, there may be an interoperability issue between the two applications because of other working mechanisms. Such problems limit the flexibility and options of an organization. Therefore, the organizations are bound to procure all the applications from the same developer. An organization cannot run smoothly if these problems exist. That’s why addressing the solution to the interoperability issue is essential.
There are two general types of interoperability
- Language Interoperability
- Semantic Interoperability
- A web browser (i.e., Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, etc.) and a website page work together based on the same standards.
- Another example is an audio or video file that plays on a portable music player.
- A mouse that gets plugged into a PC and starts working immediately.
The capability of various clouds (public clouds, private clouds, and other diverse systems) within the enterprise to understand each other’s application and service interfaces, configuration, forms of authentication and authorization, data formats, etc. It is to develop cooperation between two different cloud systems. It is the capacity or extent to which trading data connect one cloud service as per strategy to get results.
Cloud Interoperability and Portability
- Functional interfaces of the cloud service itself,
- Authentication and authorization interfaces,
- Interfaces for the administration of the cloud services,
- Business interfaces for billing and invoicing.
Interoperability in cloud computing enables the ecosystem so multiple cloud platforms can exchange information. It is a state where the cloud services can understand each other’s APIs, configuration, and authorization. Interoperability in cloud computing allows the customers to use the same or similar management tools and reuse server images and other software within various cloud computing providers and platforms.
It is the ability to move an entity from one system to another to be usable on the target system. It is the process of transferring the data from one framework/application to others to make it stay executable or usable.
Portability can be separated into two types:
- Cloud data portability
- Cloud application portability.
It is portability in which the information moves from one cloud service to another without expecting to re-enter the data.
It is the portability in which an application is moved from one cloud service to another or between a client’s environment and a cloud service.
Data portability or data migration is the area where interoperability issues can heavily affect the working of a business or organization.
It is highly recommended to have interoperability between data migration source and destination applications. If an interoperability issue exists between data migration source applications and data migration destination applications, it may cause interruptions in running the business.
Interoperability issues also impact the regular working of businesses. It is due to the lack of synchronization between applications used by different departments.
“Interoperability is a Weakness in Cloud Computing” is not entirely true. Interoperability is somehow a weakness in Cloud Computing, but not always. It is because interoperability is not an issue but a characteristic or quality of a software system. However, it becomes an issue when different software developed by two vendors fails to establish communication between them.
Thus, the Statement “Interoperability is a weakness in cloud computing” is false because interoperability is just a characteristic of applications.
Thus the correct answer to the question “Is interoperability a weakness in cloud computing?” is that interoperability is not a weakness in cloud computing because cloud computing is a powerful medium to resolve the interoperability issue.
Most cloud platforms provide interoperable applications, which also benefits data portability.
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