ITU to examine cloud computing standards

Stuart Corner
Saturday, 15 May 2010 20:38

Business IT - Technology

The ITU has set up a new focus group on cloud computing "to enable a global cloud computing ecosystem where interoperability facilitates secure information exchange across platforms."

The ITU says the group will take a global view of standards activity around cloud computing and will define a future path for greatest efficiency, creating new standards where necessary while taking into account the work of others and proposing them for international standardisation.

The group's chairman, Vladimir Belenkovich, said: "Specifically, we will identify potential impacts in standards development in other fields such as NGN, transport layer technologies, ICTs and climate change, and media coding.

"A first brief exploratory phase will determine standardisation requirements and suggest how these may be addressed within ITU study groups. Work will then quickly begin on developing the standards necessary to support the global rollout of fully interoperable cloud computing solutions."

Malcolm Johnson, director of ITU's Telecommunication Standardisation Bureau, said: "Cloud is an exciting area of ICTs where there are a lot of protocols to be designed and standards to be adopted that will allow people to best manage their digital assets. Our new Focus Group aims to provide some much needed clarity in the area."

A recently published ITU-T Technology Watch report titled 'Distributed Computing: Utilities, Grids and Clouds' describes the advent of clouds and grids, the applications they enable, and their potential impact on future standardisation.