Output Break-out Session# 5REVERSIBILITY

© ETSI 2012. All rights reserved

CLOUD STANDARDS COORDINATIONCannes, 4-5 december 2012

Session Reversibility

Reversibility – The quality of being reversible; the process of reversing actions

Reported by Stefan TaiCo-facilitators: Massimo Banzi, Olivier Colas, Andrea Pinnola

Number participants: 17+4

ETSI/BOARD(12)89_0XX2

Big picture

Functional scope

As a starting point, the following definition for Reversibility may be considered, as the one provided by EuroCIO:Reversibility: "Customers should be able in full autonomy at any time (e.g. through night scheduling) to get back all their data, in a standard format, for a predefined cost and timescale".

Mainly Reversibility addresses the threat of vendor Lock-In.In this context, the notion of reversibility implies going back to a previous state of operations: e.g.• From Cloud back to Non-Cloud• From Public Cloud back to Private Cloud• From Cloud B back to Cloud A

Scope – Discussion

Reversibility as a goal/quality (effects of reversibility)• Business and technical integrity • “Beyond data portability”

• Data + application + control framework migration• De-provisioning of entire solution stacks• Hand-over of responsibilities (over data, apps)

Reversibility as a process (achieving reversibility)• Legal requirements: contractual terms, auditing regulations• “rollback” versus “compensation” versus “going forward”

Economics of switching costsLegal aspects introduce critical challenges• “the right to be forgotten” vs. “the obligation to be remembered”

Use cases/requirements

Key questions that need to be addressed (bearing in mind the EU landscape and market) • Strong interplay of business, technical and legal concerns

Requirements/use cases• Use cases, including multi-cloud environments

• Termination of contracts• Incident management (?): “undoing” undesired effects

• Requirements depending on cloud model and direct vs. indirect consumption (chained/composed cloud offerings)• Time-stamping, versioning of data• Ensuring data formats and interoperability protocols, etc• Cf. scope discussion/challenges

ETSI/BOARD(12)89_0XX6

Who does what in this space?

Organizations delivering technical specifications and/or standards, andSuggestions on relevant standards

…everybody/every standard also related to data portability and service lifecycle management

ETSI/BOARD(12)89_0XX7