Thanks for the links. This “period of conflicting standards” is in fact a period of opportunity for integrators like RightScale. Trying to chain the providers together with standards at this early stage would not only be like herding cats but if it were successful it would significantly stifle the rampant innovation currently taking place. High level standards will converge over time and the critical base standards (HTTP, REST, SSL, etc.) are already well in place – I’ve listed some of the main ones in my Wikipedia article on the subject.

Sam