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Cloud computing has become quite the topic for discussion among just about anyone and everyone today. Google produces about 254,000,000 results on cloud computing. But do we really understand what cloud computing is all about? Ask 10 people if they have heard about cloud computing. They will say yes. Ask them what is cloud computing, and they will give you 10 different perspectives.

Cloud computing is not just a new trend, but can be compared to what happened with the introduction of the Internet. Without common and established standards for the Internet, we would not have the compatibility and reliability today behind the various browsers, FTP clients and applications. The cloud is real and has significant implications to our day-to-day lives. It is big business worldwide, and every day, new jobs, educational offerings and conferences in cloud computing are created.

How is government involved? In the United States, the federal government has strived to help clearly understand, establish and document specifications and procedures for cloud computing interoperability and its framework. Some level of governance with regard to cloud computing is necessary in order to help find good answers to key questions, such as:

Given the different perspectives around the term itself, one of the positive roles that the U.S. government has assumed is striving to define what cloud computing is. This was recognized by the government as demonstrated by the actions taken by the Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO).

The Federal CIO was charged with improving performance and lowering the cost of government operations by leveraging cloud computing. The Federal CIO asked the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to lead federal efforts on standards for data portability, cloud interoperability, and security. The resulting effort is the "Cloud Computing Synopsis and Recommendations" NIST Special Publication 800-146, authored by Lee Badger, Tim Grance, Robert Patt-Corner, and Jeff Voas:

Cloud computing allows computer users to conveniently rent access to fully featured applications, to software development and deployment environments, and to computing infrastructure assets such as network-accessible data storage and processing.

This document reprises the NIST-established definition of cloud computing, describes cloud computing benefits and open issues, presents an overview of major classes of cloud technology, and provides guidelines and recommendations on how organizations should consider the relative opportunities and risks of cloud computing. Cloud computing has been the subject of a great deal of commentary. Attempts to describe cloud computing in general terms, however, have been problematic because cloud computing is not a single kind of system, but instead spans a spectrum of underlying technologies, configuration possibilities, service models, and deployment models. This document describes cloud systems and discusses their strengths and weaknesses.

Depending on an organization's requirements, different technologies and configurations are appropriate. To understand which part of the spectrum of cloud systems is most appropriate for a given need, an organization should consider how clouds can be deployed (deployment models), what kinds of services can be provided to customers (service models), the economic opportunities and risks of using cloud services (economic considerations), the technical characteristics of cloud services such as performance and reliability (operational characteristics), typical terms of service (service level agreements), and the security opportunities and risks (security).

Original post:
Government involvement in cloud computing standards: a positive move