The council will separate the hype from the reality on how to leverage what customers have today and how to use open, standards-based cloud computing to extend their organizations.

The Cloud Standards Customer Council is an end user advocacy group dedicated to accelerating cloud's successful adoption, and drilling down into the standards, security and interoperability issues surrounding the transition to the cloud. 

The Council will provide cloud users with the opportunity to drive client requirements into standards development organizations and deliver materials such as best practices and use cases to assist other enterprises.

The Council will complement existing cloud standards efforts and establish a core set of client-driven requirements to ensure cloud users will have the same freedom of choice, flexibility, and openness they have with traditional IT environments. The Cloud Standards Customer Council is open to all end-user organizations. The group will work to lower the barriers for widespread adoption of Cloud Computing by helping to prioritize key Interoperability issues such as cloud management, reference architecture, hybrid clouds, as well as security and compliance issues.

The Cloud Standards Customer Council will:

• Deliver customer-focused content in the form of best practices, patterns, case studies, use cases, and standards roadmaps.
• Influence the standards development process for new cloud standards.
• Facilitate the exchange of real-world stories, practices, lessons and insights.
  

The Cloud Standards Customer Council's mission, strategies, and tactics center on the following premises:

• Cloud computing adoption is a key enabler for the 21st century enterprise
• Achieving the benefits of cloud computing requires significant changes for both IT and business executives
• Cloud computing is perceived by business executives as an IT integration and productivity story, rather than a business agility story
• Cloud computing practitioners would greatly benefit from a vibrant practitioner community to drive local, business-driven, cloud success, and to spur broader enterprise, and industry-wide, cloud adoption.
  

Cloud Standards Customer Council founding enterprise members include IBM, Kaavo, Rackspace, Software AG.

The world's leading organizations including Lockheed Martin, Citigroup, State Street and North Carolina State University have already joined the Council.
 

For a complete list click here.