This article is more than 1 year old

Cloud hopeful rejects Microsoft's interop patent

Open has its limits

A cloud interoperability hopeful has dismissed mighty Microsoft's attempt to patent technology for customers to transfer data between different services.

Vordel has said Microsoft's proposed patent targets a single vendors' cloud and fails to tackle lock-in as identified by the European Network and Information Security Agency.

Last month, ENSA, a European Union body tasked with preventing and tackling network and information security problems for member states, issued a detailed risk assessment on the cloud business model and technologies involved.

Vordel has instead pitched the case that only a broker - which it's in the process of rolling out - can really help customers avoid lock in. The company claimed brokers allow users to make a switch over at the interface level to a back up in the event of a failure.

Vordel is an XML and service-oriented architecture appliance specialist whose customers span UK and European banks and telcos and UK and US government departments, and it's in the midst of a beta tests for a cloud-service broker it plans to deliver during the first-quarter of 2010.

The company already got customers brokering connections between Amazon and Salesforce.com, who want to store leads in the latter but have back up to the former's S3 storage service. Customers can configure the transfer through an interface using drag-and-drop with the connection and transfer done through XML and Rest talking to the Salesforce.com web services APIs and that uses workflow to direct the communications.

Vic Morris, Vordel's chief executive officer, told The Reg in a recent interview: "One of the concerns people have is when they use Salesforce, is: 'Who owns the data and can I get my data back?' With a broker you ensure you retain copies and back up for data, you can transform it." ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like