Public clouds and official Debian image status

Debian is currently refining its criteria for public cloud images to be considered official Debian images in the same sense that most Debian DVDs or netinstall ISO images are. The fast-evolving nature of public clouds present new challenges for Debian, and in those cases where vendor employees are assisting, so do differing development and release workflows. What should Debian’s official image criteria be, and how can they be achieved in the public cloud context while meeting users’ needs?