Red Hat's Deltacloud project is developing a open source standardised API for addressing different cloud architectures in a uniform way. Cloud service users can use the Deltacloud API to access Amazon's EC2 as well as private clouds that are based on Red Hat Enterprise Virtualisation (RHEL-V); drivers for private VMware ESX clouds and the cloud services offered by Rackspace are to follow.

Backed by Microsoft, IBM, and three other outfits beckoning developers into the sky, Zend Technologies has unleashed an open source API for fashioning PHP apps that float on multiple clouds. Zend calls it the Simple API for Cloud Application Services.

All we know right now is that 2008 will be the “year of the cloud” and that right now Linux has a good chance of powering more of those clouds than anyone else.

Cloud architecture has to be defined in a way that allows applications to move around, or clouds can become the mother of all lock-ins, warned Red Hat's CEO James Whitehurst.

This digest covers clouds, Windows, security, and a lawsuit over lock-in.

On July 1, Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu in partnership with Eucalyptus Systems, an open-source cloud infrastructure firm, will be launching Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Services.

Dell has announced that it will be adding Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) to its infrastructure solutions

During their own Sept. 29 Cloud Computing Summit, IDC made what at first glance sounded like a self-defeating statement: clouds, in the long run, are actually a more expensive option than a company running its own datacenter.

The open letter, in the form of a blog entry from Red Hat VP Mark Bohannon, contains thinly veiled criticism of Microsoft and other companies that are launching their own public clouds.