New Zealand to form NZ ‘international review’ group

16 February 2011

New Zealand (NZ) IT stakeholders and technical industry experts are to form a NZ ‘international review’ group to an ISO/IEC subcommittee on cloud computing services.

This is the outcome of a 1-day workshop held in Wellington during January 2011 by Standards New Zealand and New Zealand Computer Services involving these IT stakeholders and industry experts.

Debbie Chin, Standards New Zealand Chief Executive, says ‘the international review group will ensure New Zealand can contribute to the development of international cloud computing Standards.’

Attendees at the workshop concluded that developing a New Zealand Standard is not realistic at this stage. Attendees agreed that contributing to international work should be a key goal, as the implementation of cloud computing services is of global interest, importance, and impact.

Standards New Zealand is seeking funding from interested parties to establish the international review group and support continued work in this area to provide information for New Zealand consumers and providers on cloud computing services.

Establishing a New Zealand international review group on cloud computing services will:

• help the New Zealand industry to keep pace with global change and will bring outsourcing opportunities to those services based in New Zealand

• ensure New Zealanders can contribute to change and the development of international Standards and guidelines on these services

• help to provide information to keep New Zealanders up to date about the privacy and safety of personal information stored both in New Zealand and overseas.

Other issues discussed at the workshop included government policy development, privacy, security of data, quality of service, educating consumers, international Standards, legislation, jurisdictional reach, virtualisation, and financial and workforce implications.

Defining what is meant by cloud computing services was the first challenge faced by the workshop attendees. It was agreed to adopt the current National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) definition to ensure a common understanding of the workshop scope:

‘Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.’

Standards New Zealand will publish articles on the work of the ISO/IEC subcommittee on cloud computing services in future issues of Touchstone.

ENDS

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