IEEE and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Team on Standards Development for Intercloud Interoperability and Federation

PISCATAWAY, NEW JERSEY, USA, 25 July 2017 – IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for humanity, and the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE SA), today announced a new collaborative effort has been launched with NIST to meet the growing demand for standards that address Intercloud interoperability. The new cooperative arrangement brings together efforts from the NIST Public Working Group on Federated Cloud (PWGFC) with the IEEE Intercloud Working Group (ICWG) developing IEEE P2302^TM—Standard for Intercloud Interoperability and Federation.

Cloud computing is becoming a deeply important infrastructure for society, not only powering much of the World Wide Web but also mobile applications, business systems, autonomous vehicles, and the Internet of Things. As other infrastructures have evolved—such as the global telephone system and the Internet itself—deep interoperability has been standardized, enabling service provider to service provider federation. Using such federation concepts, in a manner transparent to the end user while addressing security and privacy issues, an Internet Service Provider will facilitate access to the entire global internet and leverage the capabilities of many service providers behind the scenes. A typical modern web page viewing will have been constructed with the help of literally hundreds of networks and web servers operated by many different service providers from a variety of geographies. Cloud federation can also be done at any level in the cloud stack (i.e., IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS), meaning that collaborations can be managed among any type of business functions.

This will enable a wide range of business practices, such as wholesaling, virtual network operations, and data/service sharing. The NIST PWGFC and the IEEE ICWG will work to define a Cloud Service Provider to Cloud Service Provider global federation such that the analogous transparent use of global, multi-vendor cloud computing is able to be delivered utilizing a variety of business arrangements.

“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, 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.”

IEEE ICWG and NIST PWGFC are coordinating activities and hosting co-located successive meetings that allow for cross-participation and more streamlined collaboration.

“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. 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,” says Eric Hibbard, Chair, IEEE CPSC.

Stakeholders in the cloud ecosystem are encouraged to participate in the IEEE and NIST kickoff meetings scheduled for 31 August 2017 at 10:00 a.m. EDT. The chairs for the NIST PWGFC will be John Messina of NIST and Dr. Craig Lee of The Aerospace Corporation. The IEEE P2302 ICWG will be chaired by Dr. Robert Bohn of NIST and vice-chaired by David Bernstein of Cloud Strategy Partners.

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