Deutsche Borse, Europe’s largest exchange operator, plans to launch a marketplace for cloud services in the beginning of 2014. The upcoming Deutsche Borse Cloud Exchange (DBCE) will enable outsourced computing capacity and storage to be traded just like grains, precious metals and other traditional commodities. SiliconANGLE Founding Editor Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins shared his insights into the initiative in a recent Q&A on NewsDesk with host Kristin Feledy.

Mark highlights that trading cloud services the same way as vendor-neutral commodities is made possible by OpenStack and other open-source standards. These technologies simplify data migration between different cloud platforms and greatly reduce downtime in the process. This portability is immensely useful from the end-user standpoint, but the DBCE will likely target organizations in the financial sector and not cloud consumers who can benefit from PaaS interoperability directly.

The exchange will enable traders to buy cloud resources in eight gigabyte and one terabyte blocks. Mark says that this model works well in theory, but stresses that the current lack of support for open-standards makes it considerably less viable in practice. He explains that migrating instances from one cloud provider to another is usually a complex or impossible task due to compatibility issues and SLA considerations.

Deutsche Börse did not disclose if and how it will regulate these issues, but he estimates they will take a hands-off approach and offer cloud providers an opportunity to compete on equal grounds.

Mark concludes the interview by pointing out that the cloud market has not yet reached a point where a commodity exchange is required to maintain healthy competition. This is not necessarily bad for Deutsche given that a company called SpotCloud has been operating such a marketplace since 2010.

Click the video below for the full analysis.