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I work for ElasticHosts, a UK cloud computing infrastructure which is the first globally to be based on Linux KVM.

For Infrastructure-as-a-Service (Amazon EC2, ElasticHosts, GoGrid, etc.), issues of data ownership are clear (the same as traditional VPS hosting), and there is already a valid need to standardize the basic access APIs that are used to start and stop servers on our respective cloud infrastructures. c.f.:

Amazon cloud infrastructure API
ElasticHosts cloud infrastructure API
GoGrid cloud infrastructure API

Since all these APIs achieve similar tasks, standardization would:
- Simplify the job of the ecosystem (e.g. RightScale going multi-cloud)
- Protect our enterprise customers, who are concerned about vendor lock-in.

There are serious IaaS industry discussions, including via the CCIF, to get an API which is simple, common, and works. You can read more about ElasticHosts beliefs on designing a great API for cloud infrastructure.

I work for ElasticHosts, a UK cloud computing infrastructure which is the first globally to be based on Linux KVM.

For Infrastructure-as-a-Service (Amazon EC2, ElasticHosts, GoGrid, etc.), issues of data ownership are clear (the same as traditional VPS hosting), and there is already a valid need to standardize the basic access APIs that are used to start and stop servers on our respective cloud infrastructures. c.f.:

Amazon cloud infrastructure API
ElasticHosts cloud infrastructure API
GoGrid cloud infrastructure API

Since all these APIs achieve similar tasks, standardization would:
- Simplify the job of the ecosystem (e.g. RightScale going multi-cloud)
- Protect our enterprise customers, who are concerned about vendor lock-in.

There are serious IaaS industry discussions, including via the CCIF, to get an API which is simple, common, and works. You can read more about ElasticHosts beliefs on designing a great API for cloud infrastructure.

I work for ElasticHosts, a UK cloud computing infrastructure which is the first globally to be based on Linux KVM.

For Infrastructure-as-a-Service (Amazon EC2, ElasticHosts, GoGrid, etc.), issues of data ownership are clear (the same as traditional VPS hosting), and there is already a valid need to standardize the basic access APIs that are used to start and stop servers on our respective cloud infrastructures. c.f.:

Amazon cloud infrastructure API
ElasticHosts cloud infrastructure API
GoGrid cloud infrastructure API

Since all these APIs achieve similar tasks, standardization would:
- Simplify the job of the ecosystem (e.g. RightScale going multi-cloud)
- Protect our enterprise customers, who are concerned about vendor lock-in.

There are serious IaaS industry discussions, including via the CCIF, to get an API which is simple, common, and works. You can read more about ElasticHosts beliefs on designing a great API for cloud infrastructure.

All four services reviewed operate out of US data centers. That is a serious issue for overseas users of the cloud - both in terms of network latency/bandwidth and data jurisdiction (c.f. Canada's position on information sent across borders).

EU users may want to consider ElasticHosts or FlexiScale - both of which are UK-based.

There are, in fact, several web hosting companies who have already launched their own clouds with a fuller range of supporting services. For instance:

US: GoGrid, MediaTemple, Mosso

UK: ElasticHosts, FlexiScale

Absolutely agree that cloud hosting services offer significant economies over traditional hosting. While we're naming vendors, a more complete list of cloud vendors includes the following (and most offer a much fuller range of web hosting services than EC2!):

US: Amazon EC2, MediaTemple, GoGrid, Mosso, Linode, Joyent

UK: ElasticHosts, FlexiScale