ComputerWeekly.com

https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Open-cyber-standards-key-to-cross-platform-integration

Open cyber standards key to cross-platform integration

By Stephen McDermid, Okta

Vendor or supplier lock-in has been a longstanding topic of discussion, as far back as my first days in IT all the way back in 2002, and probably before. It was a common complaint of many large enterprises who felt penalised by multi-year managed service contracts that didn’t quite deliver on all the things they were promised, yet had no real means to do anything about it. 

This was also an issue during the formative years of hyperscale cloud. People didn’t forget the pain they had experienced. As a result many discussions have focused on how to prevent vendor lock-in, concerned by the lack of interoperability to pick and choose solutions which were largely limited by the cloud providers' ecosystem and service offerings.

Platformisation faces the same challenges, where financial efficiencies are weighed against functional and innovation limitations. Having worked for a hyperscale cloud company previously, the general consensus was “multi-cloud lowers capabilities to the lowest common denominator”,  while customers complained “make it easier for us to do multi-cloud”. So where does the happy medium sit between these two ideas?

This is where open standards play such an important and pivotal role. Open standards are the common language that allow different software systems, hardware, and platforms to talk to one another without needing a translator. They are the antithesis of vendor lock-in and are critical for cross-platform integration for several key reasons:

1. Interoperability: Open standards (like IPSIE or Oauth) operate across vendors and allow customers to pick and choose which solutions they can use, without being limited to a single vendor or technology stack. Developers don't have to reverse-engineer how a proprietary system works. If a platform supports an open standard (like Oauth for logging in), the integration path is already documented and understood.
2. Future-proofing and longevity: Proprietary integrations are fragile. If a vendor changes their internal code or goes out of business, the integration breaks. Open standards bring stability. Open standards are maintained by independent bodies (like the OpenID Foundation for IPSIE). They evolve slowly and deliberately, ensuring backward compatibility.
3. Avoiding the 'translation tax': Without open standards, every integration requires a custom translation layer. When two platforms speak the same open standard (e.g., two email servers using SMTP), they communicate directly. You avoid the processing overhead and potential for errors that come with converting data from one proprietary format to another constantly.
4. Innovation and competition: Open standards lower the barrier to entry for new competitors, which benefits the ecosystem as a whole. You can build a best-in-class tech stack. You might use a CRM from Salesforce, email from Google, and a database from Amazon. They all support open standards (like RESTful APIs), so you can stitch them together into a unified workflow.

Open standards are the fundamental bedrock of modern platformisation strategies. They shift the architectural paradigm from monolithic silos - where one vendor does everything - to modular ecosystems (where distinct, best-in-class tools connect seamlessly). This allows organisations to grow and adapt their technology stack when needed and ensures platformisation is not a one-way decision.

Stephen McDermid is EMEA CSO at Okta