VMWare published its vCloud API yesterday (it was previously only available to a few partners) and submitted it to the DMTF, as had been previously announced. So much for my speculations involving IBM.

It may be time to update the Cloud API comparison. After a very quick first pass, vCloud looks quite similar to the Sun Cloud API (that’s a compliment). For example, they both handle long-lived operations via a “202 Accepted” complemented by a resource that represents the progress (”status” for Sun, “task” for vCloud). A very visible (but not critical) difference is the use of JSON (Sun) versus XML (vCloud).

As expected, OVF/OVA is central to vCloud. More once I have read the whole specification.

In any case, things are going to get interesting in the DMTF Cloud incubator. I there a path to adoption?Assuming that Amazon keeps sitting it out, what will the other Cloud vendors with an API (Rackspace, GoGrid, Sun…) do? I doubt they ever had plans/aspirations to own or even drive the standard, but how much are they willing to let VMWare do it? How much does Citrix/Xen want to steer standards versus simply implement them in the context of the Xen Cloud project? What about OGF/OCCI with which the DMTF is supposedly collaborating?How much support is VMWare going to receive from its service provider partners? How much traction does VMWare have with Cisco, HP (server division) and IBM on this? What are the plans at Oracle and Microsoft? Speaking of Microsoft, maybe it will at some point want its standard strategy playbook back. At least when VMWare is done using it.