Cloud Industry Forum and Cloud Standards

Bryan Jones, Executive Director, Public and Large Enterprise, Dell EMEA

We recognise CIF’s Code of Practice as an important part of industry self-regulation and are delighted to work with CIF to encourage and achieve best practice.

Cloud computing is the future of computing and is rapidly becoming fully mainstream. The Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) and its code of practice will help ensure that the highest standards are maintained. As well as ensuring CIF members are appropriately skilled and regularly assessed, businesses will appreciate the peace of mind as well as a clearly defined industry standard with which they can assess their suppliers, and undertake Cloud implementations with the highest confidence and trust. Outsourcery fully endorses the principles of CIF and is proud to be a founding member.

The traditional model of delivering software and it services has gone beyond the on-premise model. Our industry has changed as has the market. As we move towards a new business model end users need the confidence that only an authoritative code of practice can bring.

Phil Haylor - Compliance Manager - Rackspace

We firmly believe that the cloud industry forum will provide assurance for end users in a rapidly developing market, providing advice and guidance to consumers and service providers alike.

Greg McCulloch, UK Managing Director, Interxion

We very much look forward to working with CIF and helping them to succeed in delivering a credible and certifiable code of practice for the cloud industry as well as bringing business, consumers and suppliers of cloud services closer together in a trusted and sustainable marketplace.

In my 20+ years working in the IT industry this is the first accreditation programme I've actively participated in, which can and will deliver real and quantifiable assurances to the end user around Cloud services. Such assurances have been inherent with other professional services bodies for many years now - so this is long overdue. Trust and Transparency are values which are at the core of ChannelCloud UK/Ireland and therefore becoming a member of the CIF has been a natural progression for us.

Facilitating consistent management across compute resources in the data center and in private, public or hybrid clouds is critical to the industry's success. The Cloud Industry Forum will help build trust with customers looking for secure, stable, and effective cloud computing solutions so that they can monitor and manage service delivery with confidence. The Cloud Industry Forum's Code of Practice initiative is a fundamental step to encourage transparency and best practices in cloud computing.

Kate Craig-Wood, Managing Director, Memset

Cloud computing presents end users with the opportunity to do more with less, however there is still work to be done in driving trust in cloud based services. We fully support CIF’s messaging, which is to assist business users in identifying and investing in secure, reliable services, and our company values go hand-in-hand with this aim. CIF educates the end user on how to identify the most suitable and cost-effective services for them and we in turn endeavour to provide our customers with low-cost, high-quality services.

As technologies like cloud develop at pace it is vital that pioneers come together and share their knowledge for the future of the industry. The Cloud Industry Forum plays a crucial role in ensuring that the technologies of tomorrow are maintained and developed to the highest standards. The hosting platforms that businesses place their trust in must keep the security of their customers at the top of the agenda and the CIF will encourage this best practice.

We fully support CIF’s goal, which is to assist business users in identifying and investing in secure and robust Cloud services. We have been focused on delivering innovative new technology to provide secure search for the cloud, so we are aware of the importance of best practice in this sector. We understand the value of Cloud Industry Forum’s messaging and we are delighted to be joining them in championing their Code of Practice.

As an industry we must build trust with customers ensuring they can rely on secure, stable, and effective cloud computing solutions. It's about helping users make decisions about which model is best for them and giving them security in the choices they make

It is essential that all major stakeholders in the cloud industry ecosystem participate in the cloud industry forum to build trust in the industry as a whole.

Intellect, the UK High Tech Trade Association, welcomes the introduction of the Cloud Industry Forum, which addresses the need for Cloud Service Providers to establish themselves as responsible organisations offering services to customers at all levels in the UK. The idea of providing assured business information to equip customers will provide a valuable extra check to support the selection of suppliers and encourage the wider adoption of proven services. Thus bringing added value to all players in this fast growing marketplace.

Michael McCloskey - CEO - FrontRange Solutions

We believe that joining the Cloud Industry Forum shows FrontRange Solutions' commitment to delivering best-in-class Software as a Service solutions as well as working with a wide variety of partners to drive awareness, adoption and best practice in managing cloud-based services and solutions

Phil Wainewright - President - Eurocloud

The CIF Code helps further EuroCloud's strategy to develop an industry-wide framework for customer confidence in the quality and integrity of cloud delivered services.

Home \ Membership \ CIF and Cloud Standards

An Introduction to The Cloud Industry Forum Standards Sub-Committee from its Chair, Ian Osborne.

Cloud Industry Forum Standards Watch,
Ian Osborne, December 2011

I am pleased to announce that the Cloud Industry Forum has established a Cloud Standards working group comprising interested members, chaired by me. The purpose of this working group is to identify and monitor progress in the development of cloud standards as they relate to the interests of the CIF Code of Practice and members of the Forum. Broadly speaking, we believe that relevant standards are important to improving the maturity of the cloud services on offer today and that in many cases they will bring benefits of increased flexibility and security for subscribing users. Rather than getting directly engaged in standards creation, we have decided to rely on watching for important developments in the marketplace via Members of the Cloud Industry Forum, keeping up to date through participation in standards development driven by their users and business needs. This way we hope to be able to provide genuine insight as to changes in the market driven by user requirements.

We will provide regular updates as to the status of significant standards developments on this website. We will also be developing a map of standards activities over the next month or two which will help prospective users and industry members to locate their business interests. We will only be directly engaging in these activities where they are strategic to the interests of the CIF Code of Practice. Initial examples include International Standards Organisation with a large amount of coordinated work underway, Cloud Security Alliance, which we believe is the leading industry authority on cloud security at present, and an initiative related to the publication of audit reports, under the TPAC programme. Further information in due course.

If you have a specific question regarding Cloud Standards and how they relate to your business, either as a consumer of services or as a provider of services. Please don’t hesitate to contact me Ian@cloudindustryforum.org.

If you are interested in becoming a member of Cloud Industry Forum and contributing to the work of this group, please contact breda@cloudindustryforum.org

Cloud Computing Industry Initiatives

Cloud Computing touches many different aspects of Information and Communications Technology. Worldwide we see a number of national and international Cloud Computing initiatives: from industry consortia to formal standardization organizations. Sometimes these initiatives are focusing on specific viewpoints of Cloud Computing, while at other times they deal with Cloud Computing architectures or use cases.

In this report we have investigated several of these initiatives and Table 1 shows a summary of current Cloud Computing industry initiatives at the time of this report.

Industry Initiative		Area of Interest
ITU-T Focus Group on Cloud Computing		International standard organization
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 7		International standard organization
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27		International standard organization
European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA)		EU agency
ETSI Technical Committee (TC) CLOUD		European standard organization
CESI (China Electronics Standardization Institute)		Chinese standard organization
CCF (Cloud Computing Forum in Korea)		Korean industry consortium
KCSA (Korea Cloud Service Association)		Korean industry consortium
Japan Cloud Consortium		Japanese industry consortium
Open Grid Forum (OGF)		Industry consortium
Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF)		Industry consortium
Cloud Security Alliance (CSA)		Industry consortium
OASIS		Industry consortium
Object Management Group (OMG)		Industry consortium
Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA)		Industry consortium
Cloud Computing Use Case Discussion Group		Ad Hoc
The Open Group		Industry consortium
Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Standards Association (IEEE-SA)		Standards Development Organization
ATIS Cloud Services Forum		Industry consortium
TeleManagement Forum		Industry consortium
Cloud Industry Forum (CIF)		Industry consortium
OSGi Alliance		Industry consortium
Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA)		Industry consortium

Table 1: Cloud Computing Industry Standards Initiatives (adapted from the ISO/IEC JTC 1 SC38 SGCC Study Group report)

OASIS International Cloud Symposium

Update on the inaugural OASIS International Cloud Symposium, held at Ditton Manor, Slough, October 10th to 13th 2011.

This major coming together of cloud standards bodies from around the world was focused on the provision of cloud standards to meet the requirements of governments and the public sector in general. We were fortunate to attract representatives from many governments to contribute their thinking as to requirements and also provide an update on their activities. Suffice to say that Cloud adoption is gathering momentum in all of the major geographies, including the USA (National Institute of Science and Technology); UK, Europe, China, India and Singapore. There were 25 standards bodies present, ranging from the largest: ISO, ITU, IEEE to more modest industry and user led initiatives.

The topics covered addressed the major items highlighted in the World Economic Forum report on Cloud Adoption see http://www.weforum.org/reports/advancing-cloud-computing-what-do-now.

For more information please see http://events.oasis-open.org/home/cloud/2011 where a report of the event and a full record of proceedings can be obtained.

CIF Research Papers

Drawing information from 450 end user organisations across all verticals and scale, as well as 200 suppliers of IT solutions, CIF's research has been structured into a series of informative White Papers.

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An Introduction to The Cloud Industry Forum Standards Sub-Committee from its Chair, Ian Osborne.

Cloud Computing Industry Initiatives

OASIS International Cloud Symposium

Update on the inaugural OASIS International Cloud Symposium, held at Ditton Manor, Slough, October 10th to 13th 2011.

CIF Research Papers

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