Open Service Broker API

By Abby Kearns

Since becoming the Executive Director for Cloud Foundry, I have been eagerly awaiting today’s launch of the Open Service Broker API project. This collaborative project with Fujitsu, Google, IBM, Pivotal, Red Hat and SAP enables developers, ISVs and SaaS vendors to deliver services to applications running within cloud-native offerings — including Cloud Foundry, OpenShift and Kubernetes — in the most straightforward, effective way possible.

Part of what I love so fiercely about the open source world is the ability to shed ego, come together to collaborate and to envision a radically open future. This type of collaborative project with Cloud Native Computing Foundation and our good friends at Fujitsu, Google, IBM, Pivotal, Red Hat and SAP is born from a shared vision of the best possible world for developers, ISVs and SaaS vendors. We are able to work together to grow our ecosystem.

The Open Service Broker API is the latest example of Cloud Foundry practicing what we preach: open source is a positive sum game. By sharing this technology more broadly, we help to standardize a critical component of cloud-native applications — services. The mission of the Open Service Broker API project is to collaboratively advance the development of a standardized approach to connecting services to platforms. This benefits absolutely everyone.

By standardizing the industry on the Open Service Broker API, we can build a foundation for an ecosystem that transcends a single community. While the Service Broker API was initially developed specifically for the Cloud Foundry platform, and is an API specification hosted at the Foundation, this specification is notably distinct from the Cloud Foundry platform. The purpose of governing the API specification as a distinct effort is to ensure an open process of collaboration and evolution of the API, as well as to support implementations of the API by other platforms and services.

The Open Service Broker API is designed to simplify service interactions for developers. As my colleague Cloud Foundry CTO Chip Childers recently explained in an article on The New Stack: “[The Open Service Broker API is] a clean abstraction that allows ‘services’ to expose a catalog of capabilities, as well as the ability to create, use and delete those services. For this to make sense, the word ‘services’ needs a bit more of a definition. We consider services to be any software or system that applications depend on for various capabilities, either as external dependencies or platform-level capabilities provided to the application.”

Since being rewritten in 2013, the v2 API solved for many of the original implementation issues and grew its capabilities. Naturally, the Cloud Foundry community began to create service broker implementations for a wide variety of applications. Even large cloud providers like Google and Microsoft began to expose their native platform capabilities via the API, making other organizations interested in Cloud Foundry or a similar platform see the potential in this rapidly proliferating ecosystem of service providers.

Meanwhile, at the Foundation, we began to understand the massive potential to help the entire industry. Multiple other projects had expressed interest in adopting the Service Broker API and integrating with Cloud Foundry. In the spirit of open source collaboration, the Cloud Foundry Foundation and Cloud Native Computing Foundation founded a working group comprised of members from Google, Engine Yard, Fujitsu, IBM, Pivotal and Red Hat, with engineers who work across projects for both foundations.

Our shared vision was to develop an industry-standard service broker that allows developers, ISVs and SaaS vendors a single, simple and elegant way to produce, sell, buy and consume software on public and private clouds. The Open Service Broker API accelerates the expansion of the global cloud ecosystem by providing a single path add services to applications. Now developers can write and configure against a single API and reach many developers across multiple platforms. As a result of this remarkable initiative, we have witnessed Kubernetes’ adoption of the Service Broker API.

There is no doubt in my mind there will be continued collaboration across the ecosystem as we embrace the industry-standard API. The open source world continues to be a meeting of the minds for a community committed to bettering its options, broadening the ecosystem and strengthening the message of open.

Today, Cloud Foundry Foundation excitedly announced the launch of the Open Service Broker API project, in partnership with individuals representing Fujitsu, Google, IBM, Pivotal and Red Hat. The Open Service Broker API project provides developers, ISVs and SaaS vendors a single, simple and elegant way to deliver services to applications running within cloud native offerings, including Cloud Foundry and Kubernetes.

Many large companies are already in the process of implementing service brokers, including Google, Red Hat and Microsoft. Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s Kubernetes service catalog special interest group (SIG) is incubating integration of the Open Service Broker API.

Join us today, December 13 at 11am PST/2pm EST for a Twitter chat to discuss the Service Broker API — and the cloud services integral to developers and the industry as a whole. Cloud Foundry Foundation’s Executive Director Abby Kearns will be there along with RedMonk analyst, Stephen O’Grady. Be sure to join the conversation by following the hashtag #Appserviceschat when you join our crowdchat: www.crowdchat.net/appserviceschat!

If you have specific questions that you would like to ask, please tweet at @CloudFoundry. We encourage you to participate in the chat by including the hashtag #Appserviceschat in your tweets and responses.

Happy tweeting!

Cloud Foundry Foundation opens up governance of Service Broker API, new group aims to incubate the standardization of service delivery across cloud offerings  

San Francisco, December 13, 2016 — Cloud Foundry Foundation, in collaboration with individuals representing Fujitsu, Google, IBM, Pivotal, Red Hat and SAP, today announced the launch of the Open Service Broker API project. The Open Service Broker API project allows developers, ISVs and SaaS vendors a single, simple, and elegant way to deliver services to applications running within cloud native offerings including Cloud Foundry, OpenShift and Kubernetes.

Many large companies are already in the process of implementing service brokers including Google, Red Hat and Microsoft. Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s Kubernetes community has a special interest group defining a service catalog that will integrate with the Open Service Broker API.

“Enterprise architectures remain complex,” said Abby Kearns, Executive Director, Cloud Foundry Foundation. “A consistent model for exposing capabilities to developers across the architecture ensures these organizations focus on developing and deploying applications that truly differentiate their business. We are excited to work with key leaders across multiple organizations to continue to develop this capability.”

“As everything from applications to infrastructure is increasingly built from services — services that are importantly run across a variety of environments — integration becomes a critical consideration,” said Stephen O’Grady, Principal Analyst, RedMonk. “Standardized interfaces such as the Open Service Broker API represent a solution to this problem, as reflected in the broad cross-community support it has attracted to date.”

“With the industry move from infrastructure level management to service level management, there’s demand for an open API for service control,” said Jay Judkowitz, Senior Product Manager, Google. “The availability of Cloud Foundry Foundation’s multi-platform, multi-marketplace API is exactly what our customers need and will be a key building block for successful multi-cloud adoption.”

“We consistently hear from cloud developers and ISVs that integration and portability of cloud-native application across platforms is critical to their speed and innovation. The new Open Service Broker API project means that developers will be able to leverage the same services across platforms,” said Todd Moore, VP Open Technology, IBM Cloud. “At IBM, we look forward to our continued work in partnership with Cloud Foundry, Cloud Native Computing Foundation and their ecosystem members to drive integration and portability of cloud-native applications with the new Open Service Broker API.”

“In a digital world, widely adopted and easy-to-use interfaces are the cornerstone of collaboration and interoperability,” said Wolfgang Ries, CMO, Fujitsu Enabling Software Technology. “The Open Service Broker API is an industry-driven, customer-centric, standardization effort aiming to reach these goals. It is a step towards filling the gap that currently exists in the cloud native landscape.”

“Cloud-native applications are built as compositions of services. A key value to this modern design is the ability to focus on the core business-differentiating value of your application while reusing common services, whether internal, platform provided, or third party provided,” said Chris Wright, Vice President and Chief Technologist, Office of Technology, Red Hat. “An open, collaborative incubation effort can provide an Open Service Broker API that gives the industry a standardized way for service providers to make their services available and gives developers an easy way to consume them.”

“Developers build great cloud-native apps thanks to platforms like Cloud Foundry and our rich ecosystem of software partners,” said James Bayer, VP of Product, Cloud Foundry at Pivotal. “The Service Broker API greatly simplifies service interactions for developers, and by having other platforms use this innovation, our customers will benefit from an even larger ecosystem of marketplace providers.”

“As a platinum member of the Cloud Foundry Foundation, we are excited about the launch of the Open Service Broker API project,” said Björn Goerke, President SAP HANA Cloud Platform at SAP SE. “With this industry-wide standardization, we can provide our customers and partners our extensive portfolio of business services through an open API in any supporting cloud platform.”

“By standardizing the industry on the Open Service Broker API, end users of cloud-native application platforms will have the benefits of service catalog interoperability across platforms and an increased growth in adoption by the ISV and cloud provider industry,” said Chip Childers, CTO, Cloud Foundry Foundation. “We have already seen the Kubernetes community begin to adopt the existing Cloud Foundry version of the API, and we look forward to this cross ecosystem collaboration move toward the shared standard.”

The Service Broker API accelerates the expansion of the global cloud ecosystem by providing a single path for developers to add services to applications. Now developers can write and configure against a single API and reach many developers across multiple platforms. For more information on the Open Service Broker API initiative, visit: https://openservicebrokerapi.org//. You can also join the Twitter chat on December 13 at 2pm ET: https://www.crowdchat.net/appserviceschat

About Cloud Foundry Foundation
The Cloud Foundry Foundation is an independent non-profit organization formed to sustain the development, promotion and adoption of Cloud Foundry as the industry standard platform for cloud applications. Cloud Foundry makes it faster and easier to build, test, deploy and scale applications. Cloud Foundry is an Apache 2.0 licensed project available on Github: https://github.com/cloudfoundry. To learn more, visit: http://www.cloudfoundry.org.

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Contact:
Jessica Rampen
Cloud Foundry Foundation
pr@cloudfoundryfoundation.org
650-787-3548