Advice is given for cloud computing ecosystem participants (cloud vendors, service providers, and users) of standards-based choices in areas such as application interfaces, portability interfaces, management interfaces, interoperability interfaces, file formats, and operation conventions. These choices are grouped into multiple logical profiles, which are organized to address different cloud roles.

This guide advises cloud computing ecosystem participants (cloud vendors, service providers, and users) of standards-based choices in areas such as application interfaces, portability interfaces, management interfaces, interoperability interfaces, file formats, and operation conventions. This guide groups these choices into multiple logical profiles, which are organized to address different cloud roles.

The purpose of this guide is to assist cloud computing vendors and users in developing, building, and using standards-based cloud computing products and services, which should lead to increased portability, commonality, and interoperability. Cloud computing systems contain many disparate elements. For each element there are often multiple options, each with different externally visible interfaces, file formats, and operational conventions. In many cases these visible interfaces, formats, and conventions have different semantics. This guide enumerates options, grouped in a logical fashion, called profiles, for such definitions of interfaces, formats, and conventions from a variety of sources. In this way, cloud ecosystem participants will tend toward more portability, commonality, and interoperability, growing the cloud computing adoption rate overall.