At the NIST Cloud Computing Workshop this week; representatives from Canada, China, and Japan presented on their cloud computing efforts. Some interesting points made:

Canada: Building "Service Canada" cloud for all citizen services, but raised the issue of data location...cloud data must be within Canada border, so they will not focus on public clouds where they don't know or can't control data location.

Japan: In response to the massive destruction of the Great East Japan Earthquake, Japan is building nation-wide cloud services to support disaster relief, data recovery, and support for rebuilding new communities.

US Ambassador Philip Verveer discussed the need for international cooperation and standards development to enable interoperability of cloud services, keeping in mind cultural and political differences. Additionally, an industry panel reported on cloud standards development, including some actual interoperability testing at http://www.cloudplugfest.org. Much of the first two days of the workshop covered progress and action plans around the 10 High-Priority Requirements to Further USG Agency Cloud Computing Adoption.

Thursday's sessions will cover the work of the various NIST Cloud Computing Working Groups on

• Reference Architecture and Taxonomy
• Standards Acceleration to Jumpstart the Adoption of Cloud Computing (SAJACC)
• Cloud Security
• Standards Roadmap
• Business Use Cases

(see Working Groups of NIST Cloud Computing )