Provider of cloud-building technology Cloudscaling has joined the Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA), a global IT industry consortium formed to establish IT requirements for cloud computing based on the needs of end users.

The company said participation in the alliance would help it further develop “hardware blueprints” for cloud infrastructure. These define server and networking combinations with predictable technical and economic performance.

Caleb Tennis, Cloudscaling’s ODCA envoy, said the organization had made impressive progress in defining standards and best practices for cloud usage.

“The combination of our experience designing, building and operating production-grade clouds for large clients with the experience and resource of the other 300-plus members means we can move the ball forward more quickly and get to the place where service providers and enterprises can make sound, facts-based decisions about cloud infrastructure deployment,” he said.

Cloudscaling Open Cloud System (OCS), the company’s key product, is a tool for building and managing infrastructure clouds. Based on the open-source cloud architecture OpenStack, Cloudscaling includes the company’s Open Cloud Operating System, hardware blueprints, open-source software, open networking and open APIs.

Cloudscaling customers include KT (formerly Korea Telecom) and Internap among others.

ODCA released its first set of “usage models” in June 2011. These outlined the requirements users had for cloud solutions.

The alliance’s usage models are meant to provide information to cloud services providers about user requirements and to provide guidance to cloud users.

In late April, ODCA announced creation of a new workgroup that would create usage models for security, manageability and interoperability of big-data frameworks with traditional data management and warehousing applications.

ODCA’s current membership count is more than 300 members. Member companies include Verizon, Savvis, ING, eBay, Pfizer, Walmart and others.