Speaking in Sydney following the global launch of its (ODC) and initiatives, Intel general manager Asia Pacific and China, data centre products, Jason Fedder, said greater certainty around the future development of the Cloud was needed.

"From our perspective we don't have a particular view on which standards are the right standards for cloud computing but it is very clear that in order for the industry to deliver on the economic benefits that Cloud computing can offer the data centre operator, there needs to be interoperability and standards," he said.

"While you have a situation where you have competing vendors trying to drive from the vendor part of the supply chain, a set of standards around storage, and management and power saving, it becomes an inhibitor for end customers as they won't make a commitment to the technology until they know which standards are being enforced."

According to Fedder, standards were needed in particular around federating the Cloud to better manage security, the aggregation of content, and the 'on-boarding' of services and service delivery within private and public Clouds.