Will a community be the answer for Cloud issues?

INDIA: CA Technologies announced the debut of Cloud Commons, a collaborative community and website for IT professionals seeking insights into how to best use cloud computing to improve how IT supports business objectives.

The goal of Cloud Commons will be to provide an information-rich environment where IT professionals can expand their knowledge and obtain pertinent information about enterprise cloud computing from across the industry. Cloud Commons will enable IT professionals to contribute to and take advantage of rigorously quantified assessments of available cloud services. 

By sharing experiences and expertise, participants will be able to make well-informed tactical and strategic IT sourcing and management decisions based on a broad spectrum of timely cloud-related content and best practices from like-minded peers, advice from industry experts, and an extensive directory of cloud providers and services, adds a press release.

In addition to CA Technologies, which is sponsoring the site, foundational members of the Cloud Commons initiative include TM Forum, Red Hat, Carnegie Mellon University and Insight Investments, which is hosting the site.

“Demand for cloud services holds significant potential for the technology and communications industries, but many barriers still exist to widespread adoption at an enterprise level,” said Martin Creaner, president, TM Forum. “We are fully supportive of this type of initiative to improve the uptake and development of a vibrant and open cloud services market.”

“As a foundation partner for CA's Cloud Commons, we look forward to providing continued leadership in driving the next wave of technology evolution through cloud computing,” said Scott Crenshaw, vice president and GM, Cloud business unit at Red Hat. “With the rich cloud content and resources available through Cloud Commons, enterprises will be further enabled to unlock the value of the cloud.”

Among the key components of the site will be these. Service Measurement Index (SMI), being developed by Carnegie Mellon University, a standard for quantifying and evaluating services, addressing the need for industry-wide, globally accepted measures for calculating the benefits and risks of cloud computing services. It will have a marketplace of cloud computing service offerings.  This marketplace is expected to include vendor service ratings to enable participants to compare alternate service options.  It will also entail an area that will allow participants to provide qualitative feedback on their experience with third-party cloud services. Features that will encourage peer collaboration and networking, permitting community commentary on content posted on the site and enable the sharing of cloud best practices. Plus, there would be articles from industry analysts and subject matter experts, blog feeds from industry thought leaders, white papers and stories on real experiences from IT professionals, adds the company.

CA Technologies invested in initial independent research to provide starting-point information about the many cloud services.  On-going community participation will be able to build on and expand this information, while also adding commentary and entirely new content.  The more than 5,000 customers at CA World 2010 can be among the first to contribute their expertise and experiences to the site.  Future planned additions are planned to include hosted web casts and webinars delivered by subject matter experts on cloud topics, and content in podcast and video formats.

“Today, there is no comprehensive, unbiased source that solicits and aggregates the most current and relevant knowledge about cloud computing and the accumulated, actual experiences that organizations are having with the cloud,” said David Hodgson, senior vice president of the Cloud Products & Solutions business line at CA Technologies. “Cloud Commons will address this need–providing IT professionals with situational awareness and visibility into what is possible with the cloud.”