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Industry players collaborate on cloud computing

Industry players collaborate on cloud computing

Collaboration will build 'vibrant and open cloud services market'

Major industry players recently forged an alliance to collaborate on cloud computing, which has recently become the buzzword in the IT industry.

Industry players, including a university and an investment firm, organised 'Cloud Commons', a Web-based collaborative community that seeks to help IT professionals learn more about cloud computing through sharing and feedback from peers.

With IT professionals sharing best practices and their expertise, Cloud Commons organisers expect IT professionals to be properly guided on how best to implement cloud computing to meet their organisation's business objectives.

Among the founding collaborators of Cloud Commons include CA Technologies, TM Forum, Red Hat, Carnegie Mellon University and Insight Investments.

"Today, there is no comprehensive, unbiased source that solicits and aggregates the most current and relevant knowledge about cloud computing and the accumulated, actual experiences that organisations are having with the cloud," said David Hodgson, senior vice president of the cloud products and solutions business line at CA Technologies. "Cloud Commons will address this need--providing IT professionals with situational awareness and visibility into what is possible with the cloud."

Collaborative features

As a collaboration tool, the Web community contains features that encourage sharing of ideas and learning to allow IT professionals to implement cloud computing in their organisations. There is an area on the website that will allow participants to provide qualitative feedback on their experience with third-party cloud services. Participants can also post comments to share their best practices.

Carnegie Mellon University will also make available the Service Measurement Index (SMI) it is developing. The index is intended as a standard for quantifying and evaluating cloud computing services and addresses the need for industry-wide, globally accepted measures for calculating the benefits and risks of cloud computing services.

The website will also be informative, with articles from industry analysts and subject matter experts, blog feeds from industry thought leaders, white papers and stories on real experiences from IT professionals.

There will also be a marketplace of cloud computing service offerings to include vendor service ratings to enable participants to compare alternate service options.

Industry partners

"Demand for cloud services holds significant potential for the technology and communications industries, but many barriers still exist to widespread adoption at an enterprise level," said Martin Creaner, president, TM Forum, an industry association of suppliers and providers of communications solutions and services.

"We are fully supportive of this type of initiative to improve the uptake and development of a vibrant and open cloud services market," Creaner added.

CA Technologies said it has invested on independent research as initial information that can help IT professionals learn more about cloud computing services. But it expects the online community to contribute more information through the website.

"As a foundation partner for CA's Cloud Commons, we look forward to providing continued leadership in driving the next wave of technology evolution through cloud computing," said Scott Crenshaw, vice president and GM, cloud business unit at Red Hat. "With the rich cloud content and resources available through Cloud Commons, enterprises will be further enabled to unlock the value of the cloud."

Other features to be added to the website include hosted webcasts and webinars delivered by subject matter experts on cloud topics, and content in podcast and video formats.

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Tags cloud computingRed HatCloud Comms

More about Carnegie Mellon University AustraliaCA TechnologiesMellonRed Hat

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