20+ companies create cloud foundation for Web app development

A who’s who of tech companies joined forces Tuesday to advance app development on cloud computing platforms.

More than 20 companies announced the creation of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, an industry group that aims to make it easier to create and scale applications in the cloud.

Currently, work done to scale cloud-based applications is extremely intensive, requiring organizations to assemble a team of experts that can integrate and maintain disparate technologies. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation, which is housed under the nonprofit Linux Foundation, will work with different cloud technologies and platforms to make it easier for developers to change the workload an app can handle.

“By bringing together the open source community’s very best talent and code in a neutral and collaborative forum, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation aims to advance the state of the art of application development at Internet scale,” Jim Zemlin, executive director at the Linux Foundation, said in a statement.

Inaugural foundation members include AT&T, Box, Cisco, eBay, Google, IBM, Intel, Red Hat, Twitter and VMware. The foundation is also encouraging more organizations to join as it looks to establish a governance model.

A big part of the work will revolve around a new set of common container technologies for cloud platforms. Cloud containers, also known as container-based virtualization, differ from other virtualization models: Services like hypervisors put an operating system on top of another operating system, and use up disk space, memory and other CPU functions. Cloud containers are much more limited, giving developers the ability to run apps without the excess utility needed to run an entire OS.

The group said the work dedicated to containers will “improve the overall developer experience, paving the way for faster code reuse, improved machine efficiency, reduced costs and increases in the overall agility and maintainability of applications.”

In a joint announcement, Google released version 1.0 of Kubernetes, its open source container orchestration system. Kubernetes, already in use at companies like Box and Red Hat, will be used by the foundation as part of an effort to “build new software that makes the entire container toolset more robust.”

“Google is committed to advancing the state of computing, and to helping businesses everywhere benefit from the patterns that have proven so effective to us in operating at Internet scale,” Craig McLuckie, a product manager at Google, said in a press release. “We believe that this foundation will help harmonize the broader ecosystem, and are pleased to contribute Kubernetes, the open source cluster scheduler, to the foundation as a seed technology.”

Two of the biggest names in cloud, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, are not currently part of the foundation. Both companies have announced their own container services within the past year.

To read more on the foundation, visit its website.