Read later Summary: Most standards and accepted taxonomies are the natural fall-out of one vendor becoming dominant in a market or sector. As we head towards the meta-connected hyper-hybrid cloud and Everything-as-a-Service there will be no single vendor. Standards - global, consistent and above all non-contentious - are now one of the most important factors in how cloud computing will shape up in the future. Get them right and many people, including me, will be surprised by the functionality and facilities that emerge from the creative application of the technologies over the coming years. Traditionally, however, `standards’ have been de facto – written, like history, by the winners out in the marketplace and subsequently dominant enough to impose their own product values on the rest of the world.