Cloud Computing Use Cases Discussion Group

The Goal of this group is to bring together cloud consumers and cloud vendors to define common use cases for cloud computing. The use cases will demonstrate the performance and economic benefits of cloud computing, and will be based on the needs of the widest possible range of consumers.

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 the use case possible.

A Use Case that clearly describes a common task and outlines the difficulties in accomplishing it is the best possible justification for any new standards work. While the work to identify and prioritize use cases will be ongoing, the first use cases paper has been released and is available for download.

The Open Cloud Manifesto is a statement of the principles for maintaining openness in cloud computing. Within two months of it's announcement, more than 200 organizations have signed on as supporters. This group's activity is done in light of the six principles of this paper:

• Cloud providers must work together to ensure that the challenges to cloud adoption are addressed through open collaboration and the appropriate use of standards.
• Cloud providers must use and adopt existing standards wherever appropriate. The IT industry has invested heavily in existing standards organizations; there is no need to duplicate or reinvent them.
• When new standards (or adjustments to existing standards) are needed, we must be judicious and pragmatic to avoid creating too many standards. We must ensure that standards promote innovation and do not inhibit it.
• Any community effort around the open cloud should be driven by consumer needs, not merely the technical needs of cloud providers, and should be tested or verified against real customer requirements.
• Cloud Computing standards organizations, advocate groups, and communities should work together and stay coordinated, making sure that efforts do not conflict or overlap.
• Cloud providers must not use their market position to lock customers into their particular platforms and limiting their choice of providers.

To put it simply, this group exists to make the principles of the Open Cloud Manifesto real.