Oracle Corporation

01/08/2025 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 01/07/2025 21:48

Interoperability and multicloud standards update

The main goal of the cloud is to do more with less: To be agile and elastic, get data out of the data center and push it to the edge, and to make better, faster, and data-driven decisions. But as businesses and governments accelerate adoption of cloud computing services, they risk losing out on the technology's fundamental purpose without meaningful multicloud deployments facilitated by true interoperability.

Cloud technology has expanded since its early days of basic-now commoditized-compute, networking, and storage. Taken together, the four US hyperscale cloud infrastructure providers (CIPs)-Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP)-offer those standard commodities plus hundreds of highly differentiated and innovative services. Companies offer many hundred more cloud services, including IBM, VMWare, Cisco, Slack, Splunk, Adobe, Atlassian, and Palantir, to name only a few.

These capabilities run the gamut from artificial intelligence platforms, database technology, analytics, integration, collaboration, and more. Because of this mix of commodity and highly differentiated capabilities, the best technical solution for a customer may be to mix and match cloud services from multiple different vendors to pursue a true multicloud solution. This model of choice and interoperability at the services level is highly demanded commercially and is essential to meet the needs of Oracle's customers.

Yet, for most new cloud computing customers, multicloud means setting up a choice between more than one vendor and then operating within each vendor's offerings after the choice has been made. The problem with this approach is that some services excel at certain workloads, such as processing imagery, and some excel at others, such as high volume and complex mathematical computations. Why saddle a critical business system with a less performant offering when the workload requires a high-performance, low-latency service? Further, price competition can't always occur because independent services might not really compete. The end-state of true multicloud is the ability for a customer to mix, match, interconnect, and interoperate among all these varied vendors' services.

Oracle multicloud

To achieve interoperability, we must address both technical standards and physical connectivity. Oracle is committed to building standards-based products to reduce complexity and help customers get the most out of their technology investments.

Oracle offers several multicloud service deployment options, including Oracle Database@Google Cloud, Oracle Interconnect for Google Cloud, Oracle Database@Azure, Oracle Interconnect for Microsoft Azure, Oracle Database@AWS, and Oracle MySQL Heatwave on AWS. To further support multicloud service deployments and interoperability, Oracle offers OCI integration services, Oracle API Gateway, and Oracle Cloud Observability and Management Platform.

Oracle also actively participates in more than 100 standards-setting organizations and more than 300 technical committees, including the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). We build products based on globally recognized standards and consume, contribute to, and manage open source to provide our customers with interoperability, choice, and lower costs. For more about Oracle's global standards engagements, see Standards at Oracle.

Proof of Oracle's commitment to open and interoperable systems is evidenced by Oracle's multicloud products embedded directly into the data centers of other clouds, which also feature commercial, technical, and support integration. Oracle's groundbreaking approach of integrating our products into other clouds along with full integration with their consoles, user experience, support, and commercial terms is challenging the assumptions of what multicloud can be. Mahesh Thiagarajan, EVP of OCI, states, "I've never been more excited about the opportunity that Oracle's multicloud products present to our customers and partners with workloads and data flowing seamlessly across clouds. We are intensifying our focus and investments to provide customers with the optimal multicloud onboarding experience leveraging the best mix of standards, open source, and commercial solutions."

Standards driving multicloud and cloud interoperability

In collaboration with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), ISO has specific standards for multicloud and cloud interoperability to explain concepts and provide guidance.

ISO/IEC 5140:2024 was recently published with title, Information technology - Cloud computing - Concepts for multi-cloud and the use of multiple cloud services. This document provides an overview and foundational concepts of cloud computing involving multiple cloud service providers (CSPs). This document establishes a common understanding of cloud solutions that use cloud services from multiple CSPs by building on the cloud computing concepts defined in all parts of ISO/IEC 22123. It also provides characteristics, benefits, and challenges relating to multicloud and other cloud deployment models involving multiple CSPs.

ISO/IEC 19941:2017, Information technology - Cloud computing - Interoperability and portability, is currently in the early stages of revision, and an updated version is expected to be published in 2026. This standard is intended to establish a common understanding of cloud computing interoperability and portability and includes considerations for cloud stakeholders, focusing on cloud service agreements concerning interoperability or portability between cloud services. The standard also emphasizes that interoperability gives cloud services customers a reduction in costs of integration, and an increase in value of services by enhancing and enriching outcomes through the composition of cloud services.

The European Data Act, published at the end of 2023, also refers to standards for interoperability and portability of cloud services. It includes requirements to remove obstacles for effective switching between cloud services and suppprt for the deployment of multicloud strategies. The Data Act alos mentions the ISO/IEC 19941:2017 standard as an important international standard, constituting a reference for the achievement of the objectives of the act. The cloud standards for the Data Act must still be drafted and have no deadline, but the act itself goes into effect on September 12, 2025.

Oracle's involvement with these standards

Oracle's External Standards and Community Engagement team participates in several ISO and CEN-CENELEC committees where standards are being introduced, developed, and revised. Through national bodies associated to the international committees and through direct participation in the subcommittees, Oracle provides direction, suggestions, and recommendations for the publication of robust standards.

One of these committees is the ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee's Cloud Computing and Distributed Platform subcommittee, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC38. This subcommittee are developing ISO/IEC 5140 and revising ISO/IEC 19941. Here, member participants are providing feedback and performing reviews.

Oracle plays a leadership role in ISO/IEC JTC1/SC38, currently with three members in the subcommittee participating through three different national bodies. Contributions provided through these representatives seek to ensure that standards being developed for cloud computing and distributed platforms are in alignment with Oracle's strategy. Participation in these committees also provides Oracle with early access and visibility to upcoming standards, so Oracle has an advantage of being prepared early.

Conclusion

A modern, interoperable, multicloud capability is the technical backbone that any cloud computing customer must have to succeed. Now is the time to demand true interoperability and embrace open multicloud architectures across all capable vendors.

Through leadership and participation in standard-setting organizations, Oracle's External Standards and Community Engagement team helps ensure that Oracle's products and services continue to offer the flexibility, openness, interoperability, and commitment to true multicloud that every cloud computing customer deserves.

For more information, see the following resources:

Oracle Multicloud Solutions
What Is Interoperability?
Update on technical standards investments at Oracle: Oracle joins the NIST AI Safety Consortium
Oracle celebrates World Standards Week
Oracle plays a key role in standardization in Europe