I’ve just heard that a draft of the Terms of Reference for the New Zealand Cloud Code of Practice have been released – the document, for those interested, can be viewed here. The initiative is something I support and something I’ve kept a bit of a watching brief on – these groups are often stacked with vendors and I was very keen or a neutral party to step up and take over the leading of the initiative after the initial impetus from Xero’s CEO Rod Drury.

Paul Matthews at the NZ Computer Society didn’t fail and that group has spearheaded the creation of the draft ToR. The opening para of he ToR says it all;

the reputation of the Cloud Computing community in New Zealand is threatened by the lack of standards and practice guidelines. This, combined with a lack of understanding of the accepted definitions of “Cloud Computing” and what it entails, results in a situation where rogue providers can advertise and offer services without meeting what are generally accepted standards of practice.

The second part of that in particular was the reason I first came up with the concept of CloudU – a broad-based educational programme that simply seeks to increase the knowledge of Cloud Computing in a vendor and product neutral way. It’s also the reason I get involved in events such as this debate next week that, hopefully, will dispel some of the myths and counter some of he FUD that people spread about Cloud.

The Code of Practice is an excellent initiative and one which I fully intend to get involved with further – well done all!