Research house Ovum, said that the success of the new Association "will depend on its capacity to attract a significant number of regulators and regional enterprises to the discussion".
The new organization's founding members include a number of heavyweight global vendors and service providers, but, Ovum says that "all the leading regional cloud computing telcos are noticeably missing".
Asia Cloud's founding members are Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, EMC, Microsoft, NetApp, Nokia Siemens Networks, The Philippines' PLDT/Smart, Rackspace, REACH, Telenor Group, and Verizon.
In a statement reacting to the announcement of the Association's formation, Ovum said
the non-profit and vendor-neutral organization has been formed "to promote collaboration among cloud computing stakeholders to accelerate market growth in Asia, which is expected to evolve faster than other regions as a result of the expected stronger economic growth".
However, Ovum said that "this growth is tempered by the region's unique and varied regulatory, policy, regional requirements, and increased security concerns. This growth may be accelerated by different initiatives such as standardizing nomenclature, addressing security standards, uniting on public policy, and validating regulatory positions, as well as educating the market on the benefits of the cloud, where a collective voice is more likely to succeed."
Ovum described the Asia-Pacific was one of the most complex regions for companies seeking regulatory compliance and market entry by outsiders.
Ovum's Principal Analyst Mike Sapien and Senior Analyst Claudio Castelli said China continues to present one of the most challenging regulatory environments.
"Foreign service providers cannot directly offer telecoms services within China," they said. "Joint ventures and partnerships are allowed, but direct investment is tightly restricted.
"It is still very unclear whether infrastructure or data can be shared outside China, which creates unique design challenges for cloud services or the ability to even back up services outside the country."
Ovum says that regional issues and challenges in the adoption of cloud computing in Asia include privacy and security concerns, compliance and regulation, business models, service levels, and other service issues and market risks.
The researchers said that Consortia, like the Asia Cloud Computing Association, "are known for having plentiful media announcements and publicizing themselves as members join, but usually fall short of any substantial developments or tangible results".
The Ovum analysts say the Association will need to be engaging policy makers, service providers, and especially early users of cloud computing within the region to promote, sponsor, identify and share some standard messages with the stakeholders (including regulators).
"This will also include sharing best practices within the region, as well as setting achievable goals that will reduce barriers to cloud adoption," they said. "It is likely that a prioritized list of issues, starting with a few countries and focusing on a few barriers, will be more successful than having broad and general goals across too many complex issues and countries."