Citrix Virtualization Journal

In describing my theory on the Cloud Multiverse, I may have missed the few obvious implications of using the prefix "multi" or consisting of more than one part or entity. Although the Cloud Multiverse thesis suggests there will be more then one internet based platform or cloud to choose from. It does little to describe how each of those clouds interact. For this we need another way to describe how each of these virtualized interconnected environments interact with one another.

In place of "multi" I suggest we use the prefix "Meta" (from Greek: μετά = "after", "beyond", "with", "adjacent", "self").

I'd like to propose yet another term to describe the inter-relationships between the world of various internet connected technologies and platforms. What I'm calling "The Cloud MetaVerse" -- This concept was inspired in part by the suggestion of Scott Radeztsky at Sun to look at the problem of cloud interoperability as a meta-problem, (problems describing other problems). In order to solve abstract problems, we need abstract solutions to these problems. This fit perfectly into my Semantic Cloud Abstraction thesis loosely described as an API for other API's.

Before I go any further, I'm not to first to use this term, according to the wikipedia -- The Metaverse was first described in Neal Stephenson's 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash, where humans, as avatars, interact with each other and software agents, in a three-dimensional space that uses the metaphor of the real world.

Unlike Neal Stephenson's virtual reality Metaverse definition or my previous Cloud Multiverse theory. Both of these concepts do little to define the external attributes but instead define how each virtual world or environment is internally governed. In the "multi"verse everything that virtually exists does so as a private segmented environment which is limited to its own specific rules that internally govern it.

In contrast the Cloud "Meta"verse is its logical inverse describing everything that exists beyond the confines of a particular virtualized environment. The Cloud Metaverse could also be called a metacloud. At the core of this theory we are given the ability to define the relationship of how multiple distributed clouds describe their interrelations between themselves (who, what, where, when, and so on)

To use a visual metaphor, in Radeztsky's Cube he describes a sort of Rubik's cube where each of the subsequent internal parts are connected but continually being rearranged. The Cloud MetaVerse describes how these series of cubes can be externally arranged as larger sets of Lego building blocks made of a series of small self contained cubes (clouds) of capacity. In a sense, what is happening within a particular virtual environment is completely secondary to how these environments interact with one another. (Microsoft may have it's own way of building a cloud that is completely different then Amazon's, it doesn't matter as long as we have a uniform meta-lanaguage to interact with each other)

Although there is still a lot more work to be done, describing the terminology of our problem set is the first step to creating a true semantic abstraction of all Internet based systems. And yes, this may be my craziest idea yet.

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