[ORG] Notes from the CCIF Wall Street "Goals/Platform/Marketing Efforts" Discussion

[Sam Charrington]

Jonathan Lambert and I helped facilitate the "Goals/Platform/Marketing Efforts" discussion at CCIFNY on Thursday. We probably had about 20 active participants for the first session, and lost about 1/3 to 1/2 due to travel schedules for the afternoon. Jonathan took more detailed notes -- at least for the first session -- so what you'll see here will be incomplete until he chimes in.

Notes from Morning Session

==========================

While we started with a pretty broad charter as a working group, the conversation very quickly converged on "advocacy" as a prime area for the CCIF to contribute. The general focus of these advocacy efforts would be to "expand the pie" by educating the end-user community about cloud; help eliminate market confusion by standardizing the definition of cloud and publishing a variety of white papers and studies; and advocating to the vendor and standards community on behalf of the enterprise/end-users.

Architectural patterns, ROI studies, pricing models and SLAs were identified as specific areas of customer confusion and key opportunities for CCIF. The group was unanimously in support of a very customer-focused approach in general, and specific mention was made to providing "solution blueprints" specific to customer pain-points so as to promote industry best practices. These would be targeted to end-user customers as educational pieces, but also to standards organizations. As an example: "We the CCIF have explored identity and access management in the clouds and these are what we think are the key customer issues that you [Standards Org X] should seek to address." 

Industry certification programs were mentioned on a couple of occasions. Standards compliance was discussed as well. 

(Ed: In a private discussion at the event or the expo before, someone mentioned the possibility of a program like the TRUSTE certification for Web sites. As an example, our program could certify that a given cloud allows XML export of data, supports import of a standard VM format, etc.)

There was an overarching belief that the industry needed a vendor-neutral clearinghouse for educational information on cloud computing -- that this was a gap in the market -- and that CCIF could and should help fill that gap.

[Unfortunately I've got to run but wanted to get this conversation going. I'll follow-up with notes from the afternoon session.]

[Jesse L Silver]

Awesome Sam.

My feelings:

On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 4:26 PM, Sam Charrington <s...@charrington.com> wrote:

Jonathan Lambert and I helped facilitate the "Goals/Platform/Marketing Efforts" discussion at CCIFNY on Thursday. We probably had about 20 active participants for the first session, and lost about 1/3 to 1/2 due to travel schedules for the afternoon. Jonathan took more detailed notes -- at least for the first session -- so what you'll see here will be incomplete until he chimes in.

Looking forward to your summary, Jonathan.

Notes from Morning Session

==========================

While we started with a pretty broad charter as a working group, the conversation very quickly converged on "advocacy" as a prime area for the CCIF to contribute. The general focus of these advocacy efforts would be to "expand the pie" by educating the end-user community about cloud; help eliminate market confusion by standardizing the definition of cloud and publishing a variety of white papers and studies; and advocating to the vendor and standards community on behalf of the enterprise/end-users.

Bingo bingo. If this isn't a reason to form an alliance, please tell me why.

As far as I'm concerned, many companies and individuals are doing their best to point out why their product is the only way to go (totally fine), but in the process spreading much FUD about other solutions. This is hurting the industry in general and an alliance is a great way to minimize (always going to be competition) this noise. At the same time, by working in a cooperative environment, companies will discover opportunities and find new ways for their technologies to build on each other. This is good for consumers, good for vendors and great for consultants.

Architectural patterns, ROI studies, pricing models and SLAs were identified as specific areas of customer confusion and key opportunities for CCIF. The group was unanimously in support of a very customer-focused approach in general, and specific mention was made to providing "solution blueprints" specific to customer pain-points so as to promote industry best practices.

This is perhaps a separate thread, but I support us reaching out now and starting to piece together "customer groups" or "committees". Customers should be part of the process sooner than later. We could start with financial services, healthcare, government, telco, web 2.0 and/or others. Get 5 or 6 customers from each vertical in each group and get them to begin advising on how they'd like this structured so as to suit their interests. We want to be responsive to them up front, could be the message.
 

These would be targeted to end-user customers as educational pieces, but also to standards organizations. As an example: "We the CCIF have explored identity and access management in the clouds and these are what we think are the key customer issues that you [Standards Org X] should seek to address." 

Industry certification programs were mentioned on a couple of occasions. Standards compliance was discussed as well. 

Our mission should certainly be extensible, but for now, I think we need to do everything possible to make this a big tent (HUGE tent, in fact).

(Ed: In a private discussion at the event or the expo before, someone mentioned the possibility of a program like the TRUSTE certification for Web sites. As an example, our program could certify that a given cloud allows XML export of data, supports import of a standard VM format, etc.)

There was an overarching belief that the industry needed a vendor-neutral clearinghouse for educational information on cloud computing -- that this was a gap in the market -- and that CCIF could and should help fill that gap.

[Unfortunately I've got to run but wanted to get this conversation going. I'll follow-up with notes from the afternoon session.]

--
Jesse Silver
c: 310-766-2006
http://www.jesselsilver.com
twitter.com/silverguru

[JP Morgenthal]

Sam,

I have to disagree that CCIF is the appropriate forum for creating a

vendor-neutral clearinghouse for educational information on cloud

computing. This forum was created to advocate open cloud standards
and ensure interoperability. Given the recent discussion about
governance and leadership on this issue alone, I believe extending the
yet-to-be-defined mission to support this is outside the scope of
intent.

Sam Johnston set up http://groups.google.com/group/cloudcomputing,
which seems satisfactory and as good as any place to start
conversation on general vendor-neutral educational information on
cloud computing. Moreover, I've already got things moving in that
direction by putting out pages to capture use cases and a dictionary.

At this point, this group has a big enough agenda just coming
together and driving the open cloud, let's not try to overburden it
with this as well.

JP
-----------------------------------------------
JP Morgenthal
cell : 703-554-5301
email: jpmorg...@gmail.com
email: m...@jpmorgenthal.com
twitter: www.twitter.com/jpmorgenthal
blog: www.jpmorgenthal.com/morgenthal