Preventing vendor lock-ins via an interoperable multi-cloud deployment approach

Abstract

A vendor lock-in makes customers dependent of a propriety product, service or technology provided by a vendor. In terms of cloud services, it is achieved by providing and developing services that are platform-dependent with proprietary technologies, interfaces or formats. This can be a huge barrier to adopt cloud services because customers are tied to specific vendors which prevent portability through proprietary or a limited set of interfaces. As consequence, customers are hindered to alternate venders easily without substantial migration costs. A multi-cloud strategy is one possible way to avoid vendor lock-ins. The scope of the is paper is to design and implement a solution-stack to provide web services which operate independent from proprietary cloud service provider technologies. We provide a solution stack prototype which will support key functionalities such as portability, interoperability and platform-independency by implementing modern technologies and standards.