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One place to inhale all cloud: Apache Libcloud 1.0 now available

Interoperability, hallelujah

The Apache Software Foundation has announced that Libcloud 1.0, the cloud service interoperability Python library, is now generally available.

Notably, version 1.0 introduces two new driver types, container-as-a-service and backup-as-a-service, with a full changelog available here – though the degree to which it will ease the burden on programmers is still not completely clear.

Libcloud was created to provide a unified API so developers could better grapple with the swelling number of cloud services companies are utilising. Apache claims the library is currently used by more than 50 providers, including Amazon Web Services, Apache CloudStack, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, OpenStack and VMware.

"When we first formed Apache Libcloud, there were many failed attempts to create a standard API specification for Cloud providers," said Tomaž Muraus, veep of Apache Libcloud.

Originally developed and open-sourced back in 2009, by Muraus and colleagues at Cloudkick, the project joined Apache Incubator from which it graduated as a top-level project in 2011, days before the 0.5.0 version release.

Version 1.0 of the interoperability library introduces multi-Cloud abstraction, which Muraus reckons is not just for compute/Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), but also for "Platform-as-a-Service components such as DNS, Storage, Application Load balancing, Backup, and Container-as-a-Service."

Libcloud now also supports supports Container-as-a-Service (CaaS) providers, Amazon EC2 Container Service (ECS), Google Cloud Container Engine (GKE), and the on-premise options from Kubernetes and Docker.

"Apache Libcloud provides a simple API abstraction to deploy Docker containers across both private and public Clouds," explained Muraus. "We have seen adoption from academic and non-profit organizations wanting to benefit from free or low-cost Clouds, but still maintaining compatibility for public clouds for commercial adoption." ®

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