ENJOY THE FULL ARTICLE!" />

Thoughts on Cloud User Interface Standards

by cloudtweaks on February 28, 2012

in Cloud Computing, Computing, IT, SaaS, Technology, Trends

Thoughts on Cloud User Interface Standards

I’ve recently come across an article, It’s time for a Cloud UI Standard, which got me thinking about the evolution of cloud computing.

The cloud started as the dream of a few visionary people, envisioning a world where computing can be sold like a utility, like electricity or water, available to all. Of course, this implies a certain level of democratization and standardization of services. But I wonder, does this really mean that everything has to be the same?

Cloud computing has evolved quickly, and although at a relatively early stage of its development, the type of services on offer vary widely. A while ago I have written an article about the need for standardization while it is still early and relatively easier to implement, but I was also mentioning the dangers of over-standardization, which could stifle development and growth.

When talking about standards now, the priorities are around the issues of security, interoperability and portability of data. So what about User Interface?

In the aforementioned article, a case is made for the need for cloud user interface standards. It is true that UI consistency would translate in increased usability, which means higher productivity, ultimately leading to cost savings. However, is it achievable? Even more, is it desirable?

Concerning the possibility of implementing user interface standards, the article does highlight the difficulties in actually getting to that stage, and it can only be done if one or more of the major players in the market agree on a common set of UI principles. But another consideration here is the variety of cloud deployments: SaaS, PaaS and IaaS – would they all need similar interfaces to manage the administration of the environment? They are meant to be used by very different people, some technical, some less so. What may make sense to some, may not make sense to the others. Would that mean that the UI standards need to be created taking into account all these differences?

As mentioned in the article, the interface for operating systems has evolved over time to look somehow similar, although there still are differences. And this has been the results of natural evolution. I wonder, is it actually desirable to impose now, at this very early stage in the life of the cloud, a set of principles concerning how the applications should look?

I believe we are all still learning about the best way to deliver the services, and only time and experience will show us the best way. While we are now past infancy and approaching maturity, it is still a time for growth and innovation, and learning, adaptability and change are still the driving forces for the cloud. So at this stage, while a discussion about the best way of designing a user interface is obviously welcome and brilliant ideas are sure to come out of it, I believe actual standards are quite a way off.

By Rick Blaisdell

(Disclaimer: CloudTweaks publishes news and opinion articles from different contributors. All views and opinions in these articles belong entirely to our contributors. They do not reflect or represent in any way the personal or professional opinions of CloudTweaks.com or those of its staff.)

Tagged as: Application, Computing, cost savings, Data, democratization, deployment, deployments, electricity, Environment, interface standards, interoperability, IT, operating systems, Productivity, Security, standardization, the cloud, usability, user interface

.

This post has been provided by who has generated 1435 posts on CloudTweaks.

Established in 2009, CloudTweaks.com is recognized as one of the leading authorities in cloud computing information. We are proud to offer contributions by our own writers as well as authors from around the globe, including CEOs, CIOs, Technology bloggers and Cloud enthusiasts. Our goal is to continue to build a growing community offering the best in-depth articles, interviews, event listings, whitepapers, infographics and much more...

1 comments
  Livefyre
Newest | Oldest
Tim Consolazio
Tim Consolazio

The key is to define the common workflows first; the analogy of the operating system is a good one, but the increasingly similar UI mechanisms are more about how users have evolved their workflows (as well as the need to make workflows translate to mobile/touch). If you try to think of UI mechanisms as standards before you understand what users want and need to do in cloud environments regardless of whether they're dealing with VMWare, HyperV, or VMTurbo, then you'll end up with a lot of bells and whistles that nobody finds useful (see "Windows Vista").  While it's true that all vendors will have a different take, there are things like "deploy a vm" that have a lot of commonality as far as workflow; you generally specify parameters (name/description/host/datastore etc., probably a form of some kind w/validation), select a template or ovf or some such (selections/catalogs), and deploy, which is generally async (so notifications, which is one area a standard would be particularly useful). Another problem is, that at this point, for the most part, the engineers building the back ends are building the UIs. Server-side mechanics building UIs for complex systems tend to end up with the same thing over and over; lots of checkboxes, trees, radio buttons, tab-based UIs, confusing functional popups, and so on. Amazon is doing some good work here; there cloud management UI has come a long way, though at this point you could argue they just pushed the "designed by server engineers" down a level by putting a nice clean facade on top of the more confusing views. Take for instance the "services" button; this provides a much more flexible navigation mechanism than simply laying everything out in tabs across the top of the UI. It's analogous to the "Start" button in Windows. Apple went a little further this way and sort of made every icon in the toolbar its own Start button, which I think is a debatable direction as far as adding too much complexity to something that should be very simple. Anyway, interesting topic.