IEEE to develop cloud computing interop standards

The IEEE has launched a program to develop standards for interoperability of cloud computing.  The primary aim seems to be to permit portability of cloud apps between cloud platforms from different cloud vendors, but potentially there's much more at stake. Let's hope the standards will cover the information security elements as well - like for example how disparate cloud services should maintain secure communications channels and authenticate each other, as well as authenticating systems and users, passing authenticated user transactions among themselves, validating data ... actually when you think about it there are lots of security aspects to take into consideration, as anyone who has read this month's cloud security awareness module will appreciate.