How can you design cloud computing systems to be interoperable and compatible with other systems?

Compatibility for medical device software is an essential element of safety. The cloud is not an immutable object. Any cloud service provider makes dozens or sometimes hundreds of changes to their systems per day. If you use a standard cloud you cannot have a validated environment for a medical device. Therefore it is necessary to use clouds with controlled update policies. Warning: this is a security and sefety issue.

This is my explanation of why this is important in a non-technical way for non-devs/IT pros: Interoperability lets different tech systems "talk" to each other. Think of it as different phone brands sharing photos seamlessly. It's vital because it saves time, reduces mistakes, and can cut costs. In healthcare, it helps doctors access records faster. In emergencies, it helps police and firefighters communicate. It's not just about sharing data but ensuring both sides understand it. Imagine two people speaking different languages but having a translator to bridge the gap.

In my experience, even though initially the focus was more on working with single cloud vendor, the tech world looks quite different now with preference of hosting applications and workloads over multi-cloud. Having an industry standard around interoperability would mean seamless movement from one cloud vendor to another and would really help enterprises and startups with hassle free movement across cloud. Different cloud providers offer various services and features. Interoperability enables organizations to cherry-pick the best-of-breed solutions from various providers. This promotes innovation and allows businesses to leverage the most cutting-edge technologies available.

Designing cloud computing systems to play nice with others is like hosting a killer party where everyone's invited. Here's the breakdown: Standardize Your Tech: Start by using industry-standard technologies and protocols. APIs Are Your Best Friends: They make it easy for different systems to connect and share data. So, design robust and well-documented APIs to keep the information flowing. Containers and Orchestration: Use containerization like Docker and orchestration tools like Kubernetes to package your apps. Data Format Consistency: Stick to common data formats like JSON or XML.

Interoperability and compatibility of cloud computing systems can also help reduce the training burden or learning curve of employees in a number of ways: - Reduced need for specialized skills: Employees only need to learn how to use one system, which can be used to access and manage all of the cloud resources they need. - Improved efficiency and productivity: Employees can easily move between systems and applications without having to learn new interfaces or commands. - Reduced errors: Compatible cloud systems can help to reduce errors by eliminating the need for custom work while migrating data or services between systems.

You may need to design systems for cloud agnostic systems. For example if you use Redshift or SQS while using AWS, there is no Redshift or SQS in GCP or Azure. If you are using Azure data pipelines or google App Engine in GCP, you may not get it when you use some other cloud. So it becomes tricky whether to use custom software like redshift or not. If we use it, what we need to do to make it compatible and interoperable.

Adopting standard interfaces like REST API or GraphQL is crucial for designing for interoperability. They provide a common language and set of rules for communication between systems, making it easier for developers to build and maintain interoperable systems. This allows systems to be easily integrated regardless of their underlying technology stack. They also facilitate systems to exchange data seamlessly, without requiring custom code or adapters to be built. Overall this promotes a more open, flexible, and extensible approach to cloud system design.

You need to be concerned with how you'll handle CORS. CORS plays a vital role in ensuring interoperability between web applications hosted on different domains. It enables web services and APIs to be consumed by clients running in browsers, even if they are hosted on different origins. This is essential for building modern, distributed web applications where data and resources may come from various sources. Merging older tech may not be straight forward as many do not start out with built in support.

One thing that I see important to design for interoperability would be to design as much based on the industry standards as possible rather than cloud vendor based products available. To implement a multi-cloud strategy one can involve using cloud-agnostic services or implementing solutions that are compatible with multiple providers For Cloud Native development, use containerization technologies like Docker. Containers encapsulate applications and their dependencies, ensuring consistent behavior across different cloud environments. Containers can be easily moved and executed in various cloud platforms that support container orchestration systems like Kubernetes. Cloud-Agonistic IaaC tools like Terraform, Pulumi, Ansible etc are good opti

If you design high security software (like a medical device or a bank) the safety/security is an essential factor. Therefore, a few very targeted protocols are chosen. Interoperability for a medical device means working with the main hospital applications, this is achieved using protocols such as HL7 2.x, HL7 fhir or standards such as IHE. Limit yourself to the protocols you use, don't insert unnecessary compatibility: what isn't there doesn't break.

For a medical device, compatibility with server-side hardware is mainly achieved with virtual machines. Using Kubernetes is very risky, given the high number of updates it is subjected to. Each update requires a new validation of the software, which is practically impossible.

For a software medical device, testing compatibility means having set up thousands of automatic tests. Manual tests should be reduced to a minimum. Remember to always have an environment that can simulate the remote cloud environment and always test for error conditions

Testing for interoperability and compatibility is an important part of ensuring interoperability and compatibility. A few key ways to test include: - Functional testing: Testing basic functions of the systems to ensure they're able to communicate and exchange data. - Performance testing: Measure the response time, throughput, and scalability of one system to ensure it can match the integration expectation in terms of volume and latency of other systems. - Security testing: Testing for vulnerabilities specifically during integration. For e.g., the biggest security exploits in blockchain, are in the bridge networks integrating two blockchains. - Integration testing: Testing the systems as a whole to ensure that they work together as expected.

Unfortunately, for security/safety software it is not enough to test and monitor the cloud environment. It is necessary to have contracts that exclude unnotified changes and to have the possibility of carrying out pre-production tests. Without these two elements the cloud for a medical device is almost unusable if it contains safety features.

Additionally you should consider. 1. Evaluate the considerations on moving to multi-cloud and the pros and cons. 2. Evaluate the readiness of current implementation from multi-cloud readiness point of view 3. Evaluate the hidden costs around moving to multi-cloud. i.e. effort and resources required 4. Latency impact on multi-cloud architectures. i.e. whether you are planning to migrate from one cloud to other OR want to use multi-cloud implementation. 5. Consider the impacts on Disaster Recovery and Redundancy plan 6. Ensure that auto scaling and load balancing taken care of in multi-cloud mode

I think any platform worth it's salt these day's provides a REST or GraphQL API along with an OAuth or Private Token authentication layer. This enables developers or integration partners to develop bespoke middleware that will connect systems in a way specific to their clients needs.