Open Group forms Cloud Work Group to spur enterprise cloud adoption and security via open standards

This guest blog comes courtesy of Dave Lounsbury, vice president of government programs and managing director of research and technology at The Open Group, where he leads activities related to government research, adaptive and real-time system software, and cloud computing. He can be reached here.

Take the BriefingsDirect middleware/ESB survey now.

By Dave Lounsbury

Like so many others, The Open Group has been busy for the past year figuring out our place in the cloud. With the great work already being done by industry groups like the Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum, CloudCamp and the Cloud Security Alliance, we have given great thought and consideration to how we can best add value to this evolving area. [Disclosure: The Open Group is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]

The growth in cloud computing has resulted in a diverse array of technical capabilities, and companies of all sizes are trying to understand how to take advantage of them in their business operations. We saw this as an opportunity to bring both vendors and end-users together with an eye toward providing guidance for adopting and implementing cloud computing in a way that helps ensure that organizations get the business benefits promised by these new capabilities.

Over the past year, The Open Group’s members have engaged in focused work to identify end-user requirements for cloud computing, identifying needs in security and identity, standards to prevent lock-in, skills in management of cloud outsourcing, and the need for enterprise architecture models for cloud. As a culmination of this, I am pleased to announce that we have officially formed our own Cloud Work Group.

We have taken what we’ve learned from our London and Toronto conferences to create a group

The Cloud Work Group is in a unique position to develop a common understanding between buyers and suppliers of how companies can use cloud products and services in a flexible and secure way to realize its full potential.

that we believe truly reflects the importance of cloud computing to The Open Group members and industry at large. Our main goal is to ensure the effective and secure use of cloud computing in enterprise architectures, given The Open Group’s experience driving vendor-neutral standards and certification programs in and around enterprise architecture.

The Cloud Work Group is in a unique position to develop a common understanding between buyers and suppliers of how companies can use cloud products and services in a flexible and secure way to realize its full potential. By focusing on customer input and drawing on the diverse views of our global members, we intend to bring a somewhat understated perspective to the discussion – that of the end-user.

Our first deliverable will be to publish a Business Scenario for Enterprise Cloud Computing, based on end-user requirements discussed at The Open Group’s latest Enterprise Architecture Conference in Toronto. During a business scenario workshop, led by MITRE’s Terry Blevins, we brainstormed and discussed the cloud’s most critical business requirements, as well as “pain points”. As Sandy Kemsley summarizes in her blog post, The Enterprise Cloud Business Scenario will help companies identify and understand business needs relative to cloud computing and thereby derive the requirements that the architecture development must address.

This is an exciting time for us as we collaborate with some of the industry’s leading cloud providers and end-user organizations to ensure both sides are in sync and able to reap the rewards as a result. The direction of the group is determined by Open Group members, but participation is welcomed from all organizations that wish to understand or contribute to the development of best practices for enterprise use of cloud computing.

To get involved or for more information, please visit: https://www.opengroup.org/cloudcomputing/. We hope you will join us!

Take the BriefingsDirect middleware/ESB survey now.

This guest blog is courtesy of Dave Lounsbury, vice president of government programs and managing director of research and technology at The Open Group, where he leads activities related to government research, adaptive and real-time system software, and cloud computing. He can be reached here.