FINOS ORB: One Cloud API to Rule Them All?

FINOS announced the Open Resource Broker yesterday, an adaptive layer to allow HPC schedulers to control cloud capacity designed to work across multiple clouds and schedulers. We’re all on in and are helping to create it.

FINOS ORB: One Cloud API to Rule Them All?

Ever wanted a single unified interface to all the clouds? One API to rule them all? Yea me too. We just got a small step closer to that being reality.

Yesterday FINOS (part of the Linux Foundation, focused on financial services) announced the Open Resource Broker. An adapter designed to allow HPC schedulers (or really anything) to provision compute capacity on clouds. It has been contributed jointly by Morgan Stanley and AWS, thank you kindly both!

Before you roll over and conclude that this is just another AWS ploy to get you to use their cloud or even that this is only for Wall Street types, I want to say something that I hope will change your mind.

HMx Labs are all in on this too. In fact, we’ve already written most of the code needed so that ORB will not only work with AWS but Azure and Google Cloud too. From near enough day one. 

I also hope I’ve built enough credibility with you dear reader that despite having a finance background you’ll believe me when I say that there is nothing in here that prevents anyone, anywhere from using it with whichever HPC scheduler you want. Or None. Just ask for cloud capacity without a scheduler if you like.

This is the internet, so I know you’re going to ask for receipts. Give me shout. I’m happy to talk.

Major Banks, Cloud Providers, and Technology Leaders Announce Unified Open Source Fabric for Next-generation High-performance Computing (HPC) to Enable Faster Decisions and Breakthrough Efficiency
The FINOS community, including members Citi, Morgan Stanley, RBC, AWS, and Oracle, is advancing open HPC initiatives that deliver faster, smarter, more accessible, and drastically more efficient compute technologies for the financial services industry, through a unified, hybrid, and AI-ready fabric.