Apache Nuvem

Apache Nuvem is just getting ramped up as a Apache Incubator project, but it's already making the news with an InfoQ article written by Mark Little (CTO of JBoss at Red Hat).

...So of course if one cloud project is good, two must be better, so what does that make three? We could find out soon, because the Nuvem project may well be going to the Apache incubator stage soon. According to the information available, it will:

* Define an open API that abstracts common cloud platform services to help decouple the application logic from the particulars of a specific proprietary cloud.

* Implement the Nuvem API for popular clouds such as Google AppEngine, Amazon EC2 and Microsoft Azure.

* Initially focus on User Authentication and Authorization, Distributed Cache, Data Store, Queuing; then extend to other services such as Chat, Logging, and Debugging.
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but the article then goes about putting the Apache Nuvem project at the same layer as Apache Deltacloud and Apache LibCloud.

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The wiki page also talks about the need for a common API to help avoid vendor lock-in when moving between cloud implementations. As with Deltacloud and libCloud, it seems that Nuvem will target Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). It is interesting to note that according to the submitters, there is a prototype under development which uses Tuscany, the Apache SCA implementation. So perhaps this effort will go some way to answering the questions around SOA and its relationship to Cloud.
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So, let me try to reiterate the alignment of Apache Nuvem project with Apache Deltacloud and Apache libCloud as initially described in it's project proposal:

Nuvem complements Apache libCloud and Deltacloud projects (which both cover provisioning and elasticity in the cloud), providing portability of applications and application services across heterogeneous cloud environments.

Apache Nuvem is about creating an Application level API that would abstract the Infrastructure Services available to build applications, like how to access a Data Storage service and store information to the storage; while Apache DeltaCloud and libCloud would provide an API to create the Data Storage and configure it for the application usage.

The current implementation of Nuvem also leverage SCA to simplify how applications can declaratively reconfigure themselves based on the Cloud environment where they are being deployed.

I hope this helps clarify the goals of the Apache Nuvem project, and how it align with Apache Deltacloud and Apache libCloud