The Open Data Center Alliance has released three master usage models with non-profit industry association TM Forum that focus on the cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) market covering the business aspects of the Cloud for enterprise end users.

The models also offer advice on engagement for requirements and the destruction of cloud resources.

One model goes deep into the area of Compute IaaS (CIaaS), to ensure interoperability and accelerate service delivery for what ODCA Technical Working Group Advisor and Intel Principal Engineer and Director of IT Cloud Strategy and Architecture Das Kamhout says is one of the first use cases for companies wanting to consume the Cloud.

“People are familiar with the acquisition of the server and virtual machine but usually, when they step into the Cloud, it is to consume software of Compute Infrastructure-as-a-Service,” Kamhout says.

“This mass usage model articulates that service or solution that enterprises IT shops will want to consume.”

The ODCA usage model for CIaaS maps out the requirements for a complete CIaaS solution, how it can be defined, provisioned, monitored and managed.

It pulls together common metrics, architectural frameworks and sets guides for consistent capabilities and service levels for multiple providers.

The other two models released this last week include Service Orchestration and Commercial Framework.

The ODCA has a number of usage model frameworks already around security, automation and management and policy but these Master models are much more all-encompassing for service delivery and service orchestration with a focus on KPIs for interoperability between cloud providers and subscribers, defining factors such as programmatic interfaces, interaction patterns and lifecycle management.

The Commercial Framework model has been set up to reduce the amount of time it takes to form an agreement between the vendor and service provider in the Cloud and Enterprise IT shop.

“Setting these agreements up to can take a lot of time – in some cases up to six months because of their complexity and the requirements,” Kamhout said.

“A lot of our data shows that while small and medium-sized business can move quite quickly to the Cloud, setting up business agreements with enterprise customers can be more difficult. This can help companies get on the same page in regard to semantics, privacy issues and concerns about indemnification,” Kamhout said.

Kamhout said the ODCA hopes that one day such papers will help lead to new industry standards around the Cloud.

“The TM Forum drives enterprise IT standards. The thought is that these documents will get the industry speaking in the same terms, which will open the door for standards that will help the industry work in an interoperable fashion,” Kamhout said.

“But I want to point out that while standards are extremely important, we also believe as the ODCA that there is plenty of room for differentiation – we want people to continue to innovate and do amazing things, but getting closer to the core standards, with all the proper conditions in place, is paramount.”

The ODCA is an independent IT consortium made up of a number of global IT leaders from both enterprise and industry. It includes BMW, Capgemini, JPMorgan Chase, Lockheed Martin, the National Australia Bank and Disney Technology Solutions.

Intel is the group’s technical advisor.

Kamhout said he uses models already drawn up by the ODCA internally to drive a lot of Intel’s architectural work.

“They are pretty detailed documents,” Kamhout said.

“The ODCA also has a maturity model that articulates where different enterprise IT shops are on a  scale of maturity. Inside of Intel we see this material as very valuable to help push our own maturity level.

He said board members of the ODCA are already using a number of the ODCA maturity models in their own daily activities, from RFPs to proof of concepts which show how the models work in real-life situations.

The ODCA is due to meet in a few weeks to discuss its next priorities for maturity models. Kamhout says discussions so far are circling around scalable storage solutions, software-defined networks and compute.

“IaaS is still really hot – it is a market we see growing to US$24bn in the next few years, and one of the core areas in this is how to do software licencing in the cloud model,” Kamhout said.

You can read download CIaaS Usage paper from the ODCA’s website or from DatacenterDynamics FOCUS here.