Defining Cloud Services Workflow: A Comparison between TOSCA and OpenStack Hot

Cloud computing is driving formidable change in the technology industry and transforming how to do business in Europe and around the world. Despite the obvious advantages of cloud computing there are a number of issues that require solutions for Cloud computing to develop further. In particular challenges include (but are not limited to) lack of support for heterogeneous Cloud providers, lack of meaningful cross-platform Cloud resource descriptions, lack of lifecycle management of Cloud applications. In this paper we propose an overview of two solutions for cloud services description and orchestration, TOSCA (Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications) and HOT (Heat Orchestration Template), a comparison among these two solution and examples of how these two solutions correlate with cloud patterns.