Towards a Cross Platform Cloud API - Components for Cloud Federation

Cross platform APIs for cloud computing are emerging due to the need of the application developer to combine the features exposed by different cloud providers and to port the codes from one provider environment to another. Such APIs are allowing nowadays the federation of clouds to an infrastructure level, requiring a certain knowledge of programming the infrastructure. We describe a new approach for a cross platform API that encompass all cloud service levels. We expect that the implementation of this approach will offer a higher degree of portability and vendor independence for Cloud based applications.