The Open Data Center Alliance has announced the release of three master usage models integrating requirements from the Alliance’s wealth of publications to help simplify provider delivery of cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solutions. With Gartner projecting that the IaaS market will grow to more than $24 billion by 2016, these new usage models provide requirements for Compute Infrastructure as a Service (CIaaS), Service Orchestration and Commercial Framework, to drive interoperability and accelerate service delivery.

Addressing a gamut of issues, including security, management and interoperability, these Master Usage Models (MUMs) are designed to deliver a comprehensive blueprint for cloud service delivery. Publication of these master usage models should send a clear mandate to providers on customer expectations for CIaaS solutions, and clarify requirements from solution stack composition to business processes. The Alliance expects the MUMs to enable providers to speed solutions to market and spur innovation by enabling service differentiation through feature enhancements atop a standard solution framework.