Several companies today announced the release of a cloud standard, the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) Federation specification (CMDBf), created by the non-profit Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) (a PDF version of the standard is available here).

Most of the capabilities in cloud computing are based on open standard for building a modular architecture that can scale and grow according to the growth we need.  At times this will be very fast. Open source software is governed by the public domain.  This will allow users to use, change, and improve the software at anytime.  This flexibility to change the source code is crucial to the advancement and continued growth in cloud computing.  Open source software is the foundation of the cloud solution and needs to stay open source for us to see REAL growth. Open source cloud hosting is the only option.

“Every day, our customers ask CA for help implementing CMDBs that federate asset and configuration data from both CA and non-CA systems. Without extensive federation, configuration management is so complicated and enterprises are forced to restrict the scope of their CMDBs projects and limit the realization of their potential value,” said Brian Bell, senior vice president for service management at CA (NYSE: CA) in a statement.

Rackspace has an open, standards-based API for The Rackspace Cloud. The API can deliver data about a VM instance, relate files to it to create a server, ensure that a customer’s VMs don’t congregate on one physical host, and create shared IP groups to ensure high availability. Does it limit us though?

“Cloud Servers has access to local, RAID10 disk storage, much like you would expect in a physical server,” Emil Sayegh, general manager of The Rackspace Cloud, said in an e-mail to InternetNews.com. “The Rackspace Cloud is also the only services suite where you can get cloud or dedicated hosting options or our unique hybrid hosting offering.”

Do you think this is limiting the “open source” cloud hosting by only allowing specific solutions that they offer?