Europe’s cloud computing strategy calls for more standardization

Grazed from ITWorld. Author: Jennifer Baker.

The European Cloud Computing Strategy, due to be announced on Friday, will seek to cut through the current jungle of standards in the European Union. The plans, put forward by the European Commission, will also try to establish guidelines for service level agreements in order to build public trust in cloud services.

The Commission admits that setting standards will not be easy. "Currently, individual vendors have an incentive to fight for dominance by locking in their customers, inhibiting standardized, industry-wide approaches," according to Commission’s strategy document. The standards that the Commission wants would be voluntary but would apply to all cloud providers, not just to deals with public administrations…

There have already been many efforts to establish working standards for cloud services, led predominantly by suppliers, but the Commission fears that without certified standards "clouds may develop in a way that lacks interoperability, data portability and reversibility, all crucial for the avoidance of lock-in." "An appropriate set of standards that can be certified in order to allow public and private procurers to be confident that they have met their compliance obligations. These standards and certificates in turn can be referenced in terms and conditions so that providers and users feel confident that the contract is fair," the strategy document says…

Read more from the source @ http://www.itworld.com/it-managementstrategy/298072/europes-cloud-computing-strategy-calls-more-standardization