Cloud Trade Association In the Works

Has the furor over the Open Cloud Manifesto opened the door for a more formal cloud computing trade association? Reuven Cohen and James Urquhart have updates about a meeting in New York attended by Microsoft, Cisco, IBM and Intel as well as representatives of CloudCamp and the Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum (CCIF).

"The group brainstormed several ideas including the possibility to build on the momentum created by CloudCamp," Cohen writes. "Additionally, the possibility of a trade association or marketing association for cloud computing was discussed but no specific actions were agreed."

Despite the lack of clear consensus, Cohen said he will  pursue a next step tomorrow in a presentation at the Cloud Computing Expo. "I will publicly ask for the support of the greater community in the creation of a completely new kind of cloud computing trade association," he writes. "This organization will be focused on the marketing and advancement of cloud computing industry, a goal we all share."

Urquhart was briefed about the NYC meeting by Jesse Silver of the CCIF, who relayed that "the conversation was extremely civil, and that each participant contributed positively to the discussion. That alone is great news to me. The atmosphere of the meeting was a key indicator to me about the likelihood that we could build open cloud standards in a cooperative, rather than competitive, fashion."

Meanwhile, Christofer Hoff has revealed yet another organizational effort. The Cloud Security Alliance will officially launch at the RSA Conference next month in San Francisco. "It’s a good mix of vendors, practitioners and interested parties who are concerned with framing the most pressing concerns related to Cloud security and working together to bring ideas to life on how we can address them," Hoff reports.