Cloud Monitoring a competitor. Some data might not be allowed to flow to a different jurisdiction. A possible solu- tion is to anonymize such data or pass it on in aggregated format only. Such changes to the data further complicate the process of integrating data and need to be observed by application that are using the monitoring data. FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS The solution proposed in this chapter describes a Cloud monitoring architecture that enables the development of interoperable and vendor- independent monitoring frameworks. Interoper- ability, though, is not only reached by design, but other aspects have to be considered, too. With user-friendly and open solutions in mind, the authors think that standards are the right way to tackle this problem and to channel research into without one being developed as of today)exist. On the other hand, there are also Cloud monitoring services normalizing, aggregating and filtering monitoring data. These services, also, use vendor- specific data formats and no standardization activ- ity is underway. As the latter is the information that is exchanged between Cloud providers and Cloud users, the latter is seen as more important for interoperable consumer-oriented solutions and would direct future research towards a standard- ized data format covering this level. Looking at standardized interfaces, we think that targeting the consumer-oriented level is valu- able for future research. End-user applications and value-added services have to operate independent of the underlying Cloud environment and Cloud management framework. One solution is the use of standardized interfaces (ideally delivering data formatted according to a standardized data format) like, for example, the Open Cloud Computing