A group of technology vendors and other companies -- including IBM, Cisco, Sun Microsystems and VMware -- last week came together to launch the , a publicly released document that attempts to set some standards for how cloud-computing networks interoperate. But the group's mission and endeavor has been controversial from the get-go because AWS and Microsoft, among others, were left out of the process of drafting the document, and Microsoft chose to reveal the existence of the manifesto before IBM and others were ready to go public about it.

On the panel Monday Linda Bernardi, [cq] founder of IT consulting firm StraTerra Partners, defended the Open Cloud Manifesto, saying that its aim is to open a discussion about setting parameters for cloud-computing, not to be the end all, be all for how cloud-computing should work.

"The idea was to begin to identify the core advantages and challenges and make sure we bring end-user customers into the process," she said.

Bernardi said it won't merely be a group of large technology vendors that ultimately defines how cloud computing is implemented. "it's going to be a process," she said.

"Enterprises, companies -- be it banks, manufacturing companies -- big companies will define what cloud computing is," Bernardi said. "It can't be determined by a vendor or set of vendors."