Cloud Working Group

The OMG Cloud Working Group, formed in July 2018, is the successor to the Cloud Standards Customer Council (CSCC), started in 2011.

The OMG Cloud Working Group publishes vendor-neutral guidance on important considerations for cloud computing adoption – highlighting standards, opportunities for standardization, cloud customer requirements, and best practices to foster an ecosystem of open, standards-based cloud computing technologies.

The co-chairs of the Working Group, until the September 2019 meeting, are:

• Claude Baudoin (Principal, cébé IT & Knowledge Management)
• David Harris (Supply Chain Cyber Security, The Boeing Company)
• Karolyn Schalk (Client Success Manager, IBM Hybrid Cloud SaaS; IBM Certified Cloud Solutions Architect)

Co-chair roles and responsibilities are less formal in an OMG Working Group than they are in a Special Interest Group or Task Force. There are no formal policies and procedures about the organization of a WG. However, it is our intent that after the first year, the CWG will formally elect its co-chairs. Lisa Schenkewitz (IBM) has volunteered to alternate with Karolyn Schalk and take one of the co-chair seats in the summer of 2019.

Membership in the CWG is open, free, and not restricted to holders of an OMG membership. However, co-chairs must be from an OMG member company.

The CWG plans to largely operate through work performed “off-line” by its members, such as the writing and editing of discussion papers.

In addition, status reviews and discussions of the CWG's roadmap will occur during regular meetings. The initial cadence of meetings, agreed at the 25 Sep 2018 kickoff meeting in Ottawa, is:

• a face-to-face meeting (half a day or a full day) during the quarterly OMG meeting week;
• one teleconference per quarter midway between OMG meetings.

The next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday 11 December 2018, 9:00 am–12:00 pm, during the OMG meeting in Renton (Seattle), Washington State, USA.

The CSCC created 28 guides or papers during its existence. All of those become “OMG Discussion Papers,” although they are not being re-published with a new title or cover page at this time. The change in name and branding will occur as the papers are updated.

The roadmap for the writing of new Discussion Papers or the updating of existing ones will be decided by the group as a whole during its meetings. It will then be presented by one or more of the co-chairs at the quarterly meeting of the OMG's Middleware and Related Services (MARS) Task Force, in order to prepare MARS for review, approval and issuance of the papers.

In Q4 2018, we are working on three papers in parallel:

1. A new Practical Guide to Cloud Delivery Technologies. The leader is Karl Scott (Satori Consulting). The kick-off conference call occurred on 24 October 2018 with about 50 participants. Once this paper exists, it may supersede technology considerations in some other papers, which will need to be revised accordingly.
2. A new Practical Guide to Cloud Governance, initiated by Karolyn Schalk (IBM) and Ash Heda (Wipro). They will propose an abstract and a calendar to develop this.
3. Version 3 of the Practical Guide to Cloud Service Agreements. This effort will be launched on 31 October 2018, at which point the leader will be designated (Claude Baudoin is convening the launch meeting but may not lead the development of the paper.

In Q1 2019, we intend to revise the White Paper (will be now be called a Discussion Paper, in accordance with OMG terminology) on Cloud Service Agreements: What to Expect and What to Negotiate.

The next stage of the roadmap will be discussed at the December 11 face-to-face meeting.

Per OMG policies and procedures, there are now new types of deliverables that the CWG may undertake:

• RFIs when more information is required from members, users or vendors
• RFPs when the CWG wishes to solicit a new standard
• RFCs when there is an existing, uncontested technology that can become a standard

However, RFPs and RFCs can only be issued by a Technical Committee upon recommendation of a Task Force. The CWG will generally request such a recommendation from the Middleware and Related Services (MARS) Platform Task Force, but may from time to time go through another, more relevant Task Force.

Interested OMG and non-OMG participants are invited to join the CWG.

We have a mailing list, [email protected]. If you join the CWG, you will be added to the distribution. To ask to be added to the mailing list manually, or to unsubscribe, please click here, state your request in the message, and press Send.

The following people are currently able to edit this wiki directly, and more will be added as appropriate:

• Claude Baudoin and Karolyn Schalk (co-chairs)
• Paulo Takeda (IBM Brazil)
• Tracie Berardi (OMG staff)

Others should be able to use the discussion box to suggest changes, and the authors will implement the changes or discuss them with the authors of the suggestions. If you encounter any difficulty doing so, please contact Claude Baudoin.

Also contact Claude if you wish to become an author/editor of this wiki. You will be given your own username and password to do so.

This is a list of relevant international and national standards; compliance or certification programs; and other initiatives, strategies, policies, procedures, and governance documents that should be considered when formulating positions, creating documents, or suggesting OMG standardization efforts.

• Federal Cloud Computing Strategy (draft)
• Cloud Acquisition Professional’s Cloud Adoption Survival Tips, Lessons, and Experiences (CASTLE) Guide
• Cloud Ethics Opinions Around the U.S. (a compilation from the American Bar Association about the criteria that are used to determine that lawyers can ethically use cloud computing in their practice)

(under construction, in part by collecting references from the existing CSCC guides and white papers, or those sent by members of this group)