Cloud services, such as Cloud Computing, storage, and applications, represent a significant evolution in the use and provision of digital information services for business effectiveness. While market hype and growth in Cloud services is at an all time high, the development of a commercial market of sellers and buyers of such services has only just begun.Already the market is becoming littered with a confusing array of technical features, names, terms, and proprietary approaches. While the market holds great promise, it will not grow if real customers' needs are not addressed, or if services do not deliver the quality, value, and security that they promise.The idea of 'renting' computing capabilities is not new. In fact, the global telecom network is in many regards the original Cloud-on-demand services running over a shared infrastructure. What makes Cloud-based services new and exciting is the level of user control and the ability to blend in-house computing with services in the Cloud to create a seamless, transparent, and highly cost-effective information environment. Cloud services represent a key enabler of financial benefit for all types of Service Oriented Enterprises (SOEs), providing competitive flexibility and efficiency.There are many technological and business roadblocks that stand in the way of innovation and widespread adoption of Cloud capabilities. Unless these barriers can be removed, and economic and operational cost pressures addressed, Cloud services will never realize their commercial potential. This is where the TM Forum comes in. It is becoming apparent that there are a number of key issues that are emerging that need to be addressed in order for the Cloud to be a commercial success, including security, performance, governance, portability between Clouds, and overall transparency. Many argue that most of these issues-particularly the fears over security-are more imagined than real. That may be true, but unless they are addressed to the satisfaction of the buyer community, the Cloud will fail to make it into the big leagues where major corporations are surrendering significant portions of their infrastructure to the Cloud.The TM Forum has a proven track record of leading the communications and IT industries through market challenges and helping the market create, deliver, and monetize new business opportunities. To this end, the TM Forum has initiated a viii viii wide-ranging Cloud Services Program to bring together the elements necessary for realizing a successful Cloud services market, including an Ecosystem of Cloud buyers and sellers that will enable commercialization of this major business opportunity and a series of collaboration teams looking at issues such as governance, Cloud performance metrics and benchmarking, portability, and transparency of Cloud services.In this book, William Chang, Hosame Abu-Amara, and Jessica Feng Sanford take an important step in providing some clarity to the increasingly confusing Cloud world. Beginning with a general introduction to the Cloud and the busi...