[occi-wg] ElasticHosts introduction

[Chris Webb]

Quick intro: I'm Chris Webb, CTO of ElasticHosts, and I designed the
ElasticHosts API (see http://www.elastichosts.com/products/api for docs)
which has been well-received by users and integrators for its clarity and
simplicity. See for example Ignacio's comments on ElasticHosts integration
with OpenNebula:

  http://www.ogf.org/OGF25/materials/1567/OpenNebula.pdf

We've been discussing API standardisation with Randy Bias from GoGrid for a
little while, and Alexis and Sam have been encouraging us to get involved
now the OCCI group is properly underway.

One of our key design goals was that it be possible to describe our complete
API in a couple of pages, and interface to it in a couple of lines of shell
script without proprietary tools. I strongly believe that producing an
heavyweight, overengineered API which doesn't satisfy this aim completely
fails end users. We wrote some thoughts on this on our website in a New
Year's blog posting:

  http://www.elastichosts.com/blog/2009/01/01/designing-a-great-http-api/

and some more general points in a submission to the working group for cloud
infrastructure API standardization at OGF25:

  http://www.elastichosts.com/blog/2009/03/03/cloud-api-standardization-at-ogf25/

We're looking forward to discussing these issues with the newly formed
group, and I'm about to follow up on some of work the group has done to date
and some of the major issues.

Cheers,

Chris.