Speaking the Same Language — Cloud Events Specification

With the increase in FaaS (Function-as-a-Service) providers and event producers at large, the need for defining a format such as the Cloud Events specification was inevitable. While there have been similar attempts in the past, this time it is backed by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).

By defining a common event format, events generated from one Cloud provider can be consumed in a function or application built on another Cloud platform. This would help FaaS (Function-as-a-Service) providers such as AWS Lambda, Azure Functions etc. to interoperate with each other. It will also enable consuming, correlating and tracing events across IoT devices, Cloud providers and other Middleware.

The spec offers a host of SDKs across languages that provide a way to generate events in the Cloud Events format. The CNCF’s Serverless Working Group which defines the specification is also inviting contributors to improve the spec.

While it is still early days (the spec is in v 0.2), the spec appears to be timely and a step in the right direction. It will help the application developers build a distributed application and to host their application functions across FaaS providers.

Cross posted at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/speaking-same-language-cloud-events-specification-hussain-zaki/