The IEEE Standards Association recently announced that it will be teaming up with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to develop principles for cloud interoperability or federation.
“Today, there is a growing recognition that the lack of cloud federation in a landscape of multiple independent cloud providers is limiting the service reach, resources and scalability that can be offered in a rapidly expanding marketplace,” said Bob Bohn, chair of the IEEE Intercloud Working Group. “Much like the interconnected network economy that has evolved in the wireless world, the cloud is primed for the advancement of standards that will establish an open framework for cloud-to-cloud federation that benefits both cloud providers and end users. IEEE’s collaboration with NIST has evolved due to increased industry demand and a desire to advance solutions in the near term.”
According to the IEEE press release, the federation of cloud services will enable practices like wholesaling, virtual network operations, and data/service sharing.
“We are encouraged by the renewed interest and collective efforts that are being applied to take cloud federation and interoperability to the next level,” said John Messina, chair, NIST PWGFC. “Together, NIST and IEEE are both seeking to meet cloud stakeholder demands by enabling cloud federation in order to bring more open and advanced cloud offerings that will help build a more robust economy for all stakeholders.”
“With today’s threat landscape, security and privacy must be factored into to cloud federation to ensure the widest adoption possible,” said Eric Hibbard, chair, IEEE CPSC. “To this end, the IEEE Cybersecurity & Privacy Standards Committee (CPSC) is excited to partner with this collaboration to help address the anticipated security and privacy issues.”
IEEE and NIST will hold a kickoff meeting for members of the cloud ecosystem on Aug. 31.
