The newly formed Asia Cloud Alliance vowed to resolve issues surrounding cloud computing to lower barrier to adoption and meet industry-specific needs.

Launched at an event hosted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in Hong Kong, the Alliance is a joint venture initiative of Oracle, telecommunications carriers,  IT and professional service providers in the Asia-Pacific.

Founding members include Hutchison Global Communications (HGC), VADS (a Telekom Malaysia company), LG CNS, Telstra, AAPT and Oracle, with PwC acting as an advisor in develop the framework for interoperability standards.

Steve Au-Yeung, Executive Vice President for Oracle in Asia Pacific, explained during the launch that the cloud is evolving and convergence of technology trends have been driving enterprise data centers and service providers over the last few years, such as grid computing, server virtualization, and large-scale management automation.

However, despite the interest of companies in the cloud, many are holding back due to concerns such as security and data privacy/sovereignty; performance, reliability and local support; ability to modify application/integrate with internal IT; interoperability across clouds, and regulatory compliance in different countries.
 
The Alliance said it brings together an entire business ecosystem to address these issues and facilitate partnerships that would drive the development of interoperability standards.
 
Au-Yeung said it is critical that organizations collaborate with proven IT infrastructure and business service providers to ease adoption and unlock value beyond simple cost efficiencies and IT consolidation.