Red Hat developed the migration mechanism between "clouds"

The "cloud" architecture should be designed so that to allow different applications to move between "clouds", otherwise application of cloud computing tightly will block IT infrastructure, CEO Red Hat James Whitehurst warns.

As soon as the user gets to "cloud", he cannot move a little any more, the top manager said in the last interview. Therefore the industry just should be convinced whether really the new model of IT architecture is friendly to users, but not to the IT companies first of all as it is represented at the moment, he considers.

"Blocking" of IT in "cloud" can happen by different methods: through impossibility to move working applications between different "clouds" and also through difficulties with extraction of data of their "cloud". Besides, clients of service providers are forced to use specifically that the virtualization platform which was selected by IT service provider that is unprofitable for the first.

According to Uaytkhyorst, Red Hat uses the considerable efforts to overcoming all listed contradictions, first of all using certified partners. The main task – to make mobile the "cloud" environment, than and the special program of the company under the name Premier Cloud Provider Program is devoted.

"Our users have an opportunity to transfer data and work areas to own data centers or to migrate to other "cloud" providers. And we will continue to support their business processes just as if "cloud" remained attached to our data center", - he told.

Let's remind that Amazon Web Services became the first provider who was certified within the Red Hat program, since then the list was replenished at the expense of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) and IBM. The certified providers should use the virtualization platform based on ESX hypervisor from VMware, Hyper-V from Microsoft or own development of Red Hat - KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine).

To move work areas of data from data center to "cloud" or even two "clouds", the Application Programming Interface (API) interface which great variety is at the moment developed is required. According to Vaytkherst, "even would be better than them less". However, the main difficulty consists not in setup of this interface, and in the solution of a question of whether there will be applications "on the new place" with former efficiency. Movement in itself from "cloud" in "cloud" is only 10% of all labor-intensive process, speak in Red Hat.

The next logical step within the program is providing to clients an opportunity to migrate from "cloud" in "cloud" together with all licenses. In April Red Hat announced the Cloud Access program which allows users to enjoy support as for traditional servers on demand, and the servers placed in Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud.

Red Hat not the only company which works on mobility of "cloud" architecture. For example, VMware develops Cloud Service Director service, earlier known Project Redwood code-named. However, so far it still is in a stage of beta testing which should come to the end by the end of 2010.