ITU forms joint coordination activity on cloud computing

The Telecommunication Standardization Advisory Group (TSAG) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on January 17, 2012 announced the establishment of a Joint Coordination Activity on cloud computing (JCA-Cloud).

According to the UN agency in charge of ICT, the work of the ITU-T Focus Group on Cloud Computing (FG Cloud) will now be progressed through a number of ITU Study Groups with the “JCA acting as a mechanism to coordinate the many dimensions of the study of cloud computing.”

The FG Cloud, the ITU says was formed following a request by leading CTOs to investigate the standardization landscape in the cloud computing market and pursue standards to lead to further commoditization and interoperability of clouds.

The ITU said in a statement that the primary objectives of the JCA-Cloud will be to allocate FG Cloud’s deliverables to study groups with associated domains of competence, and to ensure that the ITU-T standardization work on cloud computing progresses in a well-coordinated manner across all the relevant study groups.

The JCA-Cloud will also analyze the cloud computing work taking place in regional and national standards development organizations (SDOs), consortia and fora, and will act as a point of contact for external bodies seeking to coordinate or collate their cloud computing standardization work with that of ITU-T, the statement noted.

The TSAG decided that an ITU-T Study Group 13 should be designated the lead study group on cloud computing, it added.

By Ekow Quandzie