IPY: Interoperability & Portability

The provider shall use open and published APIs to ensure support for interoperability between components and to facilitate migrating applications.

All structured and unstructured data shall be available to the customer and provided to them upon request in an industry-standard format (e.g., .doc, .xls, .pdf, logs, and flat files).

Policies, procedures, and mutually-agreed upon provisions and/or terms shall be established to satisfy customer (tenant) requirements for service-to-service application (API) and information processing interoperability, and portability for application development and information exchange, usage, and integrity persistence.

The provider shall use secure (e.g., non-clear text and authenticated) standardized network protocols for the import and export of data and to manage the service, and shall make available a document to consumers (tenants) detailing the relevant interoperability and portability standards that are involved.

The provider shall use an industry-recognized virtualization platform and standard virtualization formats (e.g., OVF) to help ensure interoperability, and shall have documented custom changes made to any hypervisor in use and all solution-specific virtualization hooks available for customer review.