As companies continue to examine the risks and benefits of moving their applications to cloud-based services, there are two new concerted efforts underway to take a broader look at the challenges inherent in cloud computing. 

To deal with the concerns about cloud computing in Asian countries, 11 vendors banded together to form the Asia Cloud Computing Association. In addition to the usual concerns companies have about security and service, there are special concerns in Asia surrounding the cloud, including regulation, compliance issues and fragmentation in the market, reports IDG News Service's Mikael Ricknäs. 

Meanwhile on the other side of the world, the European Union is handing out about $21.4 million to a project dubbed Vision Cloud, which will research cloud storage issues, reports IDG New Service's Jeremy Kirk. The three-year research project will be conducted by IBM (NYSE: IBM) researchers in Haifa, Israel; Siemens, SAP, the Swedish Institute of Computer Science and the National Technical University of Athens.

The Cloud Vision researchers will look into several storage-related topics, including attaching metadata to storage objects, computational storage, secure access control and data mobility.

For more:
- see Mikael Ricknäs' article at CIO magazine
- see Jeremy Kirk's article at CIO magazine

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