TOSCA 2.0: Revolutionizing Cloud Orchestration

The OASIS Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications (TOSCA) Technical Committee has made significant strides in enhancing cloud application portability and management. On December 5, 2024, the committee approved and published TOSCA Version 2.0 as a Committee Specification, marking a crucial milestone in the development of cloud orchestration standards.

TOSCA provides a language for describing cloud application components and their relationships through service topologies, as well as specifying lifecycle management procedures using orchestration processes. This approach enables automation of both deployment and complete service lifecycle management, promoting a model-driven methodology where the embedded information in the model structure drives automated processes.

The TOSCA specification aims to achieve several key objectives:

• Facilitate portable deployment to any compliant cloud
• Enable smoother migration of existing applications to the cloud
• Allow flexible bursting and consumer choice
• Support dynamic, multi-cloud provider applications

By enhancing the portability of cloud applications and services across their entire lifecycle, TOSCA enables the interoperable description of application and infrastructure cloud services. It also describes relationships between service components, and operational behaviors such as deployment, patching, and shutdown. This is achieved independently of the service supplier and specific cloud provider or hosting technology[7].

The newly approved TOSCA Version 2.0 Committee Specification is now available in multiple formats, including an editable source (authoritative version), HTML, and PDF. These documents are readily accessible for testing and implementation, reflecting the OASIS commitment to transparent and open standards development[4].

The TOSCA Technical Committee’s work represents a significant contribution to the cloud computing ecosystem, promoting interoperability, reducing vendor lock-in, and facilitating more efficient management of complex cloud-native applications. As cloud technologies continue to evolve, the TOSCA specification is poised to play a crucial role in shaping the future of cloud application orchestration and management.

Citations:
[1] https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tosca/charter.php
[2] https://www.oasis-open.org/policies-guidelines/tc-process-2017-05-26/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OASIS_TOSCA
[4] https://www.oasis-open.org/technical-committees/
[5] https://standict.eu/standards-repository/working-group/oasis-topology-and-orchestration-specification-cloud
[6] https://github.com/oasis-tcs/openc2-tc-ops/blob/main/Documentation-Norms.md
[7] https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/ict-standards-procurement/solution/tosca-oasis-topology-and-orchestration-specification-cloud-applications-tosca-tc
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oasis_(band)

Jane Ginn CTIN President & Co-Founder

Jane Ginn ~ As the co-founder of the US-based Cyber Threat Intelligence Network (CTIN), a consultancy with partners in Europe, Ms. Ginn has been pivotal in the development of the STIX international standard for modeling and sharing threat intelligence. She also served as the Secretary of the OASIS Threat Actor Context Technical Committee, contributing to the creation of a semantic technology ontology for cyber threat actor analysis. Her efforts in this area and her earlier work with the Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) TC earned her the 2020 Distinguished Contributor award from OASIS. She is currently supporting the analysis services of Datos Insights, an advisory firm focusing on the financial services sector. In public service, she advised five Secretaries of the US Department of Commerce on international trade issues from 1994 to 2001 and served on the Washington District Export Council for five years. In the EU, she was an appointed member of the European Union's ENISA Threat Landscape Stakeholders' Group for four years. A world traveler and amateur photojournalist, she has visited over 50 countries, further enriching her global outlook and professional insights.

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