Both academia and industry have started to consider the federation and collaboration between individual clouds (referred to as Cloud 2.0). The key feature of Cloud 2.0 is to eliminate the barrier among multiple clouds via joint cloud computing. For example, researchers from Europe have coined the concept of SuperCloud to enable cross-cloud computation migration. Cisco advocates their Intercloud Fabric to enable transparent communication across clouds. Researchers have also explored the economy of various resource prices in different clouds to save the cost by using cost-aware cross-cloud services.

Joint cloud computing (a.k.a. JointCloud) is a new generation of computing model for Cloud 2.0, which facilitates developers to customize cross-cloud services by means of 'software definition' based on the integration and cooperation among cloud service entities. The goal of the workshop for JointCloud is to investigate theories and methods of abstracting and aggregating cross-cloud resources, building integrated virtual private clouds, as well as exploring novel applications that leverage JointCloud. Compared to previous efforts in the category of Cloud 2.0, JointCloud not only focuses on a vertical integration of cloud resources but also expects a horizontal cooperation between cloud providers in the form of service-oriented computing.