Intel helps create Open Data Centre Alliance

An Open Data Centre Alliance has been established to help companies move forward with their cloud initiatives.

Over 70 major companies have signed up to the alliance, including BMW, JP Morgan Chase, Marriot International and Shell.

They will draw up future hardware and software requirements to produce more "open and interoperable" cloud solutions.

Intel helped establish and launch the independent group and has been appointed as technical adviser.

In its utopian cloud vision, Intel believes the alliance will "accelerate the inevitable outcomes" of the cloud progressing towards greater openness, said vice president in the Intel architecture group, Boyd Davis.

Speaking today during the launch of the Cloud 2015 vision at CERN's Globe of Science and Innovation in Switzerland, Davis claimed Intel had been a major part of helping establish standards in other areas of technology previously.

Now the tech giant wants to facilitate the establishment of standards in the cloud, without inhibiting innovation.

The alliance members will draw up a roadmap for cloud developments and will use this to guide purchase decisions and planning for future data centre innovations.

Version 1.0 of this roadmap will be made into a public document ready for the first quarter of 2011 and any corporation will be able to access it to help guide their cloud plans as well.

A member of the steering group, BMW's vice president of IT infrastructure Mario Mueller, explained the benefits of the collaboration initiative.

"The alliance will give us a unified voice to speak together about what we collectively need to ... address the challenges we face inside of our organisations as quickly and effectively as possible," Mueller said.

"For the first time an independent consortium of leading global IT managers will work together to share their collective knowledge to find the requirements of the data centre and cloud environments for today and, of course, for tomorrow."

Within the alliance there is a marketing committee and a technical coordination committee.

The latter has chartered five work groups, including services, management, infrastructure, security, and government and ecosystem, all of which are now in the process of forming alliance objectives.

IBM has also been busy initiating projects to help firms with their cloud initiatives.

Earlier this week, Big Blue launched its Cloud Computing Lab in the UK, designed to help partners reap the benefits of the cloud.