Overview
ISO/IEC 19941:2017 - Information technology - Cloud computing - Interoperability and portability - defines common terminology, concepts and relationships for cloud interoperability and cloud portability. It clarifies what is meant by making cloud services, data and applications interoperable or portable, and describes facet models and types to help cloud stakeholders (CSPs, CSCs, cloud partners) agree what they need and how to achieve it.
Key Topics
- Common terminology and scope for interoperability and portability in cloud computing, reducing ambiguity in cloud contracts and designs.
- Facet models: cloud interoperability facet model, cloud data portability facet model, and cloud application portability facet model - used to break down technical concerns by capability type (infrastructure, platform, application).
- Interoperability types: transport, syntactic, semantic (data), behavioural, and policy interoperability - explains interactions between services, APIs and protocols.
- Data portability types: syntactic (formats, encodings), semantic (meaning, schema mapping), and policy portability (retention, access controls).
- Application portability: movement of workloads between non-cloud and cloud or between cloud services, including functional and policy considerations.
- Cross-cutting concerns: security, Identity and Access Management (IdAM), migration processes (including dynamic migration), APIs/interfaces, and open source implications.
- Policy and legal facets: contracts, licenses, laws/regulations and organizational policies that affect portability and interoperability.
Applications
ISO/IEC 19941:2017 is practical for:
- Cloud architects and engineers designing interoperable APIs, data schemas and migration processes to avoid vendor lock-in.
- Procurement and legal teams crafting Service Level Agreements (SLAs), contracts and license terms that specify portability and interoperability requirements.
- System integrators and migration specialists planning data or application migration strategies that address syntactic and semantic mapping, security and IdAM.
- Product managers and CSPs defining service capabilities and documentation to make services composable and portable.
Typical uses include drafting migration requirements, specifying API behavior and data formats for integration, assessing lock-in risk, and aligning cloud solutions with compliance and governance needs.
Related Standards
- ISO/IEC 17788 (Cloud computing - Vocabulary)
- ISO/IEC 17789 (Cloud computing - Reference architecture)
- ISO/IEC 19086‑1 (Cloud SLAs)
- ISO/IEC 19944 (Cloud computing - SaaS)
These complementary standards provide vocabulary, architecture, SLA and service-specific guidance referenced by ISO/IEC 19941:2017.
Keywords: ISO/IEC 19941:2017, cloud interoperability, cloud portability, data portability, application portability, CSP, CSC, cloud migration, APIs, IdAM, vendor lock-in.