The Open Group, a vendor and technology consortium, is releasing two new sets of industry standards: The SOA Reference Architecture and the Service-Orietned Cloud Computing Infrastructure Framework. The new standards are expected to help businesses integrate cloud and SOA elements into their business architecture.

The SOA RA is going to be a blueprint for creating and evaluating SOA offerings, the group said, and the SOCCI will be the first cloud computing standard by the group. Executives said they hope to create concepts and building blocks for every SOA and cloud initiative in a company. The group is also releasing an update to The Open Group Service Integration Maturity Model.

"In today's global competitive marketplace it is imperative that business and IT drivers are aligned," said Chris Harding, Director for Interoperability, The Open Group. "Each of the three standards is vendor-neutral and helps an organization of any size to design and implement the proper SOA and Cloud solutions for its business objectives."

Companies looking to integrate cloud computing should review the three standards and see how they can incorporate them into their operations.