Page 79 - Cloud Essentials

their digital identities at multiple SaaS providers; this is also known as

single sign-on (SSO). Social networks such as Twitter and Facebook have
proven to be convenient identity providers on the Internet, as shown in
Figure 3-8. Some SaaS providers even facilitate the use of company-identity
credentials, such as those residing in Microsoft’s Active Directory. This
would allow users to authenticate with their corporate credentials and gain
access to cloud services without a separate username and password.

FIGURE 3-8 Twitter and Facebook acting as identity providers for relying
party applications

Standardization
Organizations adopting the cloud should select providers that perform the
right amount of standardization on the types of services that are used.
Properly used, standardization improves interconnection and

interoperability between services. Standardization should be part of a cloud
customer’s exit strategy; standardized service configurations might be
exportable from one provider and importable to another. However, when
overdone, standardization restricts innovation.
Vendor lock-in occurs when cloud provider solutions use proprietary
settings and tools instead of widely accepted standards. Cloud customers
should look at standardization in their cloud provider offerings. An example

might be a PaaS provider allowing developers to build web services that

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