A comprehensive survey of interoperability strategies for various infrastructure as a service (IaaS) cloud platforms is conducted in this paper. The authors define cloud interoperability, and discuss existing taxonomies, standards, and implementations of cloud interoperability. They end with suggested promising directions for future research.

Three specific interoperability standards--open virtualization format (OVF), cloud data management interface (CDMI), and open cloud computing interface (OCCI)--are identified and compared. The analysis is readable and reasonably thorough, and certainly addresses a topic of high interest in today’s technical environment.

There is no explanation for the absence of OASIS from the set of standards groups under consideration. There is a curious absence of references to any other literature providing a similar comprehensive survey. I was able to quickly locate at least six with publication dates between 2011 and 2012. Also, the authors should have included references to the FutureGrid project, which provides a testbed for cloud interoperability, including the ability to switch between underlying hypervisors.