Red Hat offers cloud API as an open standard

Red Hat claims the only complete cloud stack with no cusotmer lock-in

Red Hat has extended its Cloud Foundations initiative, claiming that it now offers the only cloud computing stack that does not lock customers in. The firm has also submitted its cloud API for certification as an open standard.

Announced in June, Red Hat's Cloud Foundations: Edition One, is based on vendor-neutral APIs. Now complete, this delivers the portability and choice that customers need to avoid being locked into a single cloud provider, according to the firm.

"This is crucial for customers as the computing world evolves to the cloud," said Paul Cormier, Red Hat executive vice president for products and technologies.

Only two companies can deliver a complete top-to-bottom stack for cloud computing, Cormier claimed; Red Hat and Microsoft.

Building on what the firm's chief executive Jim Whitehurst told V3.co.uk in June, Cormier re-iterated Red Hat's commitment to an open cloud architecture that gives customers choice at every level of the stack.

As part of this, Red Hat said it has submitted the specifications for its Deltacloud API to the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), claiming it as a step forward in offering application portability across different cloud computing environments.

Unveiled last year, Deltacloud allows developers to build an application that can run across different cloud stacks, according to Red Hat. The DTMF will also manage the API in future, Red Hat said.

"We don’t want Deltacloud to be under the control of any one vendor, and that includes Red Hat," said Cormier.

Red Hat also announced that animation studio DreamWorks has committed to using Cloud Foundations in its production pipeline in future.

"Red Hat's Cloud Foundations provides a compelling platform to enable our cloud strategy, giving us the ability to quickly scale our compute needs to meet the demands of our productions," said DreamWorks chief technology officer Ed Leonard.