The Open Group, the remains of the Open Software Foundation formed way back when to keep Sun from taking over Unix, has formed a Cloud Work Group to "ensure the effective and secure use of cloud computing in enterprise architectures based on open standards."

It says it will use the work the consortium and its members have done over the last year related to end-user requirements for cloud computing and the vendor lock-in issue to develop standard models and frameworks.

The group's first deliverable will be to publish a Business Scenario for Enterprise Cloud Computing based on the end-user requirements discussed at the Open Group's July Enterprise Architecture Conference in Toronto.

The consortium says business scenarios are an important technique that are explored as part of The Open Group's so-called TOGAF framework and "can be used at various stages of enterprise architectures to derive architecture requirements directly from high-level requirements for each business organization."

The Enterprise Cloud Business Scenario is supposed to help companies identify and understand business needs relative to cloud computing and derive the requirements that the architecture development must address.

The July workshop isolated 40 pain points associated with not using the cloud and they covered agility, resource optimization, cost, obstacles to innovation, security, risk management, compliance, IT support and business continuity, issues the Open Group figures cloud computing can address.

So far it says the cloud must be independent of the infrastructure, portable, elastic, localized and interoperable with extensible on-demand local business rules, transparent reporting, uniform security and identity management, easily understood billing, support for local compliance regulations and customer-centric SLAs. There should also be support for governance as well as migration, redundancy and multiple standby schemes.