I'm happy to announce that IBM has created a new Cloud Computing Working Group focused on creating interoperable cloud usage scenarios. IBM described this new effort as "an experiment in group authorship"

In a recent email from Dirk Nicol at IBM, Nicol outlined the following to the Open Cloud Manifesto Supporters;

We have a growing community forming around the principles of the manifesto and have over 200 supporters. Several of you have asked about next steps. Ideas that have been raised include a white paper on customer usage scenarios, coordination on event/trade show participation, an open cloud manifesto 2 that is more technical in nature, brainstorming on how to encourage standards organization coordination, etc.

The one idea that seems to resonate across the board is the creation of a usage scenario white paper. We plan to propose this activity on the Open Cloud Manifesto LinkedIn group and discussion forum where we will solicit community participation (see the community section at http://www.opencloudmanifesto.org/resources.htm ).

In addition to the value that can be gained from a user input/perspective on the key scenarios, this will serve as an experiment in "group authorship". We will focus on usage scenarios rather than technical solutions where Intellectual Property (IP) concerns would require more of a formal organizational structure and formal agreements. Our goal is to quickly gain consensus for the scope for the project, and then allow those with the strongest interest and willingness to contribute to work together to produce a draft for review. This effort should help us understand the real customer needs for integration, interoperability, and flexibility/portability in context of usage scenarios. In order to keep the effort focused on producing results, we would like to target an initial draft of a white paper by July 31st.

The use cases:

• Will provide a practical, customer experience based context for discussions on interoperability and standards.
  
• Will make it clear where existing standards should be used.
• Will focus the industry's attention on the importance of Open Cloud Computing.
  
• Will make it clear where there is standards work to be done. If a particular use case can't be built today, or if it can only be built with proprietary APIs and products, the industry needs to define standards to make that use case possible.
• In order to kick off this effort, below is a link to a google group that can be used for collaboration: http://groups.google.com/group/cloud-computing-use-cases

If you have any technical problems joining the google group, please contact IBM at help(at)opencloudmanifesto.org

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