I wanted to get the cloudcamp groups input on an idea I've passing around.
I've been talking to a number of companies about how we might be able to
financially organize ourselves for the development of a Cloud Computing
Guide book (The Cloud Guide) as well as our cloud camp events. One of the
ideas was to form an industry alliance called "The Cloud Alliance". The
alliance would be setup as a "non profit" technology association, similar to
that found in the open source industry. All  cloudcamp sponsorship and book
revenues would be directed to the alliance and used to help foster common
cloud specifications and cloud computing adoption / advocacy programs.

Given the level of interest from our cloud camp sponsors, these companies
would most likely form the basis for the alliance. There would be a yearly
fee which would could also include sponsorship of the various cloudcamp
events and cloud computing guide (to be published by a major publisher). A
board of govenerners would also be elected to oversee the organization and
would be made of up of key industry participants.

An alliance website would also be formed at www.cloudalliance.org, and hosed
on ning.com (http://cloudalliance.ning.com/)

Here is my attempt at a mission statement;

"The Cloud Computing Alliance consists of leading companies dedicated to
making enterprise-class cloud computing technology work together. We help
customers put open cloud solutions to work by enabling application
integration, certifying quality solutions, and promoting cooperation among
cloud solutions developers."

What do you think?

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Reuven Cohen
Founder & Chief Technologist, Enomaly Inc.

blog > www.elasticvapor.com
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Get Linked in> http://linkedin.com/pub/0/b72/7b4

Ganging up as an alliance gets my vote, as long as the vision includes
an explicit statement of the like :-

"The alliance will promote interoperability and portability between
cloud computing providers at all levels of the software stack and
provide consumers with information regarding the level of freedom for
any particular cloud computing solution, including alternative
providers, ease of portability between providers, known
interoperability issues, quality of service and freedom of data &
code."

Also the boards composition should include large business consumers of
cloud computing and not simply technology vendors. I'd advise
carefully avoiding a technology consortium pushing the interests of
vendors and not the consumers of cloud computing.

My only other suggestion is that you really should try to get Tim
O'Reilly on the board (seeing that he has been talking about
commoditisation of software, the issues of the internet as an
operating system and open source for the best part this decade).