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ETSI delivers report on Cloud Computing Standards

Sophia Antipolis, 16 December, 2013: The final report from ETSI’s Cloud Standards Coordination initiative was made public on December 11 in Brussels. The report was delivered at an event jointly organized between ETSI and the European Commission attended by over 100 experts from the cloud community.

The overall objective of the Cloud Standards Coordination initiative led by ETSI was to identify a detailed map of the standards required to support a series of policy objectives defined by the European Commission[1]. The initiative attracted cloud industry players, public authorities, user associations and more than 20 standards setting organizations to work collectively on this objective.

“I am pleased that ETSI launched and steered the Cloud Standards Coordination (CSC) initiative in a fully transparent and open way for all stakeholders. Today's announcement gives a lot of hope as our European Cloud Computing Strategy aims to create 2.5 million new European jobs and boost EU GDP by EUR 160 billion by 2020.” says Neelie Kroes, European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda.

The report provides:

• A definition of roles in cloud computing;
• The collection and classification of over 100 cloud computing Use Cases;
• A list of around 20 relevant organizations in cloud computing Standardization and a selection of around 150 associated documents, Standards & Specifications as well as Reports & White Papers produced by these organizations;
• A classification of activities that need to be undertaken by Cloud Service Customers or Cloud Service Providers over the whole Cloud Service Life-Cycle;
• A mapping of the selected cloud computing documents (in particular Standards & Specifications) on these activities.

Finally, the report offers a set of recommendations on the way forward. The analysis shows that cloud standardization is much more focused that anticipated and that standards are maturing in some areas.

“Cloud computing has gained momentum and credibility, thus generating new offers and demands for more complex use cases and services.” says Luis Jorge Romero, Director General at ETSI. “In this perspective, standardization is seen as a strong enabler for both investors and customers and can help increase security, ensure interoperability, data portability and reversibility”.

On behalf of EuroCloud Europe bernd becker and Tobias Höllwarth took part in the various working groups of this ETSI programm.