1.

Overview:

Comparisons:
Cloud computing derives characteristics from, but should not be confused with:

1. Autonomic computing — "computer systems capable of self-management"

2. Client–server model – client–server computing refers broadly to
any distributed application that distinguishes between service providers
(servers) and service requesters (clients)
3. Grid computing — "a form of distributed computing and parallel
computing, whereby a 'super and virtual computer' is composed of
a cluster of networked, loosely coupled computers acting in concert to
perform very large tasks"
4. Mainframe computer — powerful computers used mainly by large
organizations for critical applications, typically bulk data-processing such
as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning,
and financial transaction processing.
5. Utility computing — the "packaging of computing resources, such as
computation and storage, as a metered service similar to a
traditional public utility, such as electricity";
6. Peer-to-peer – distributed architecture without the need for central
coordination, with participants being at the same time both suppliers and
consumers of resources (in contrast to the traditional client–server model)
7. Service-oriented computing – Cloud computing provides services related to
computing while, in a reciprocal manner, service-oriented computing
consists of the computing techniques that operate on software-as-a-
service.
 Characteristics

The key characteristic of cloud computing is that the computing is "in the
cloud" i.e. the processing (and the related data) is not in a specified, known or
static place(s). This is in contrast to a model in which the processing takes place in
one or more specific servers that are known. All the other concepts mentioned are
supplementary or complementary to this concept.
Generally, cloud computing customers do not own the physical infrastructure,
instead avoiding capital expenditure by renting usage from a third-party provider.
They consume resources as a service and pay only for resources that they use.
Many cloud-computing offerings employ the utility computing model, which is
analogous to how traditional utility services (such as electricity) are consumed,
whereas others bill on a subscription basis. Sharing "perishable and intangible"
computing power among multiple tenants can improve utilization rates, as servers
are not unnecessarily left idle, which can reduce costs significantly while
increasing the speed of application development. A side-effect of this approach is
that overall computer usage rises dramatically, as customers do not have to
engineer for peak load limits. In addition, "increased high-speed bandwidth" makes
it possible to receive the same. The cloud is becoming increasingly associated
with small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as in many cases they cannot justify or
afford the large capital expenditure of traditional IT. SMEs also typically have less
existing infrastructure, less bureaucracy, more flexibility, and smaller capital
budgets for purchasing in-house technology. Similarly, SMEs in emerging
markets are typically unburdened by established legacy infrastructures, thus
reducing the complexity of deploying cloud solutions.
Economics
Cloud computing users avoid capital expenditure (CapEx) on hardware, software,
and services when they pay a provider only for what they use. Consumption is
usually billed on a utility (resources consumed, like electricity)
or subscription (time-based, like a newspaper) basis with little or no upfront cost.
Other benefits of this approach are low barriers to entry, shared infrastructure and
costs, low management overhead, and immediate access to a broad range of
applications. In general, users can terminate the contract at any time (thereby
avoiding return on investment risk and uncertainty), and the services are often
covered by service level agreements (SLAs) with financial penalties.
According to Nicholas Carr, the strategic importance of information technology is
diminishing as it becomes standardized and less expensive. He argues that the
cloud computing paradigm shift is similar to the displacement of private factory
power generators by utility power plants early in the 20th century.
Although companies might be able to save on upfront capital expenditures, they
might not save much and might actually pay more for operating expenses. In
situations where the capital expense would be relatively small, or where the
organization has more flexibility in their capital budget than their operating budget,
the cloud model might not make great economic sense. Other factors having an
impact on the scale of potential cost savings include the efficiency of a company's
data center as compared to the cloud vendor's, the company's existing operating
costs, the level of adoption of cloud computing, and the type of functionality being
hosted in the cloud. Additionally, companies can usually depreciate equipment,
such as computers, where services cannot be written off in the same fashion.
Among the items that some cloud hosts charge for are instances (often with extra
charges for high-memory or high-CPU instances), data transfer in and out, storage
(measured by the GB-month), I/O requests, PUT requests and GET requests, IP
addresses, and load balancing. In some cases, users can bid on instances, with
pricing dependent on demand for available instances.
Architecture

Cloud computing sample architecture

Cloud architecture, the systems architecture of the software systems involved in
the delivery of cloud computing, typically involves multiple cloud
components communicating with each other over application programming
interfaces, usually web services and 3-tier architecture. This resembles the UNIX
philosophy of having multiple programs each doing one thing well and working
together over universal interfaces. Complexity is controlled and the resulting
systems are more manageable than their monolithic counterparts.
The two most significant components of cloud computing architecture are known
as the front end and the back end. The front end is the part seen by the client, i.e.
the computer user. This includes the client’s network (or computer) and the
applications used to access the cloud via a user interface such as a web browser.
The back end of the cloud computing architecture is the ‘cloud’ itself, comprising
various computers, servers and data storage devices.

History:

The underlying concept of cloud computing dates back to the 1960s, when John
McCarthy opined that "computation may someday be organized as a public utility."
Almost all the modern-day characteristics of cloud computing (elastic provision,
provided as a utility, online, illusion of infinite supply), the comparison to the
electricity industry and the use of public, private, government and community
forms was thoroughly explored in Douglas Park hill’s 1966 book, The Challenge
of the Computer Utility.
The actual term "cloud" borrows from telephony in that telecommunications
companies, who until the 1990s primarily offered dedicated point-to-point data
circuits, began offering Virtual Private Network (VPN) services with comparable
quality of service but at a much lower cost. By switching traffic to balance
utilization as they saw fit, they were able to utilize their overall network bandwidth
more effectively. The cloud symbol was used to denote the demarcation point
between that which was the responsibility of the provider from that of the user.
Cloud computing extends this boundary to cover servers as well as the network
infrastructure. The first scholarly use of the term “cloud computing” was in a 1997
lecture by Ramnath Chellappa.
Amazon played a key role in the development of cloud computing by modernizing
their data centers after the dot-com bubble, which, like most computer networks,
were using as little as 10% of their capacity at any one time, just to leave room for
occasional spikes. Having found that the new cloud architecture resulted in
significant internal efficiency improvements whereby small, fast-moving "two-
pizza teams" could add new features faster and more easily, Amazon initiated a
new product development effort to provide cloud computing to external customers,
and launched Amazon Web Service (AWS) on a utility computing basis in 2006.
In 2007, Google, IBM and a number of universities embarked on a large scale
cloud computing research project.  In early 2008, Eucalyptus became the first open
source AWS API compatible platform for deploying private clouds. In early
2008, Open Nebula, enhanced in the RESERVOIR European Commission funded
project, became the first open source software for deploying private and hybrid
clouds and for the federation of clouds. In the same year, efforts were focused on
providing QoS guarantees (as required by real-time interactive applications) to
Cloud-based infrastructures, in the framework of the IRMOS European
Commission funded project. By mid-2008, Gartner saw an opportunity for cloud
computing "to shape the relationship among consumers of IT services, those who
use IT services and those who sell them" and observed that "organizations are
switching from company-owned hardware and software assets to per-use service-
based models" so that the "projected shift to cloud computing ... will result in
dramatic growth in IT products in some areas and significant reductions in other
areas."

Key features:

 Agility improves with users' ability to rapidly and inexpensively re-

provision technological infrastructure resources.
 Application Programming Interface (API) accessibility to software that
enables machines to interact with cloud software in the same way the user
interface facilitates interaction between humans and computers. Cloud
Computing systems typically use REST-based APIs.
 Cost is claimed to be greatly reduced and capital expenditure is converted
to operational expenditure. This ostensibly lowers barriers to entry, as
infrastructure is typically provided by a third-party and does not need to be
 purchased for one-time or infrequent intensive computing tasks. Pricing on
a utility computing basis is fine-grained with usage-based options and fewer IT
skills are required for implementation (in-house).
 Device and location independence enable users to access systems using a
web browser regardless of their location or what device they are using (e.g., PC,
mobile). As infrastructure is off-site (typically provided by a third-party) and
accessed via the Internet, users can connect from anywhere.
 Multi-tenancy enables sharing of resources and costs across a large pool of
users thus allowing for:
 Centralization of infrastructure in locations with lower costs (such as
real estate, electricity, etc.)
 Peak-load capacity increases (users need not engineer for highest
possible load-levels)
 Utilization and efficiency improvements for systems that are often
only 10–20% utilized.
 Reliability is improved if multiple redundant sites are used, which makes
well designed cloud computing suitable for business continuity and disaster
recovery. Nonetheless, many major cloud computing services have suffered
outages, and IT and business managers can at times do little when they are
affected.
 Scalability via dynamic ("on-demand") provisioning of resources on a fine-
grained, self-service basis near real-time, without users having to engineer for
peak loads. Performance is monitored and consistent and loosely coupled
architectures are constructed using web services as the system interface. One of
the most important new methods for overcoming performance bottlenecks for a
large class of applications is data parallel programming on a distributed data
grid.
 Security could improve due to centralization of data, increased security-
focused resources, etc., but concerns can persist about loss of control over
certain sensitive data, and the lack of security for stored kernels. Security is
often as good as or better than under traditional systems, in part because
providers are able to devote resources to solving security issues that many
customers cannot afford. Providers typically log accesses, but accessing the
audit logs themselves can be difficult or impossible. Furthermore, the
 complexity of security is greatly increased when data is distributed over a wider
area and / or number of devices.
 Maintenance of cloud computing applications is easier, since they don't
have to be installed on each user's computer. They are easier to support and to
improve since the changes reach the clients instantly.
 Metering means that cloud computing resources usage should be
measurable and should be metered per client and application on a daily, weekly,
monthly, and yearly basis.
 Electronic Recycling The costs of electronic recycling are shifted to the
hands of the cloud provider.

Introduction:
"Computation may someday be organized as a public utility".
The actual term "cloud" borrows from telephony in that telecommunications
companies.
The cloud symbol was used to denote the demarcation point between that which
was the responsibility of the provider from that of the user.
Cloud computing extends this boundary to cover servers as well as the network
infrastructure.
Helps to use applications without installations.
Access the personal files at any computer with internet access.
This technology allows much more efficient computation by centralizing storage,
memory, and processing and band width.
Based on a study conducted in June 2009 by version one, 41% of IT senior
professionals doesn’t have sound knowledge on cloud computing.
In September 2009, Aberdeen Group found that 18% reduction in there IT budget
and a 16% reduction in data center power costs.

The underlying concept of cloud computing dates back to 1960, when John
McCarthy opined that "computation may someday be organized as a public
utility"; indeed it shares characteristics with service bureaus that date back to the
1960s.

The actual term "cloud" borrows from telephony in that telecommunications

companies, who until the 1990s primarily offered dedicated point-to-point data
circuits, began offering “VIRTUAL PRIVATE NETWORK (VPN)” services with
comparable quality of service but at a much lower cost.

The cloud symbol was used to denote the demarcation point between that which
was the responsibility of the provider from that of the user. Cloud computing
extends this boundary to cover servers as well as the network infrastructure.
Cost is claimed to be greatly reduced and capital expenditure is converted to
operational expenditure. Device and location independence enable users to access
systems using a web browser regardless of their location or what device they are
using.
Cloud computing is an emerging computing technology that uses the internet and
central remote servers to maintain data and applications.

5. Layers
The Internet functions through a series of network protocols that form a stack of
layers, as shown in the figure (or as described in more detail in the OSI model).
Once an Internet connection is established among several computers, it is possible
to share services within any one of the following layers.
Client:
A cloud client consists of computer hardware and/or computer software that relies
on cloud computing for application delivery, or that is specifically designed for
delivery of cloud services and that, in either case, is essentially useless without it.
Examples include some computers, phones and other devices, operating
systems and browsers.
Application:
Cloud application services or "Software as a Service (SaaS)" deliver software as a
service over the Internet, eliminating the need to install and run the application on
the customer's own computers and simplifying maintenance and support. People
tend to use the terms ‘SaaS’ and ‘cloud’ interchangeably, when in fact they are two
different things. Key characteristics include

 Network-based access to, and management of, commercially available (i.e.,

not custom) software
 Activities that are managed from central locations rather than at each
customer's site, enabling customers to access applications remotely via the Web
 Application delivery that typically is closer to a one-to-many model (single
instance, multi-tenant architecture) than to a one-to-one model, including
architecture, pricing, partnering, and management characteristics
 Centralized feature updating, which obviates the need for downloadable
patches and upgrades.

Application as a service:

 Defined as service-on-demand, where a provider will license software

tailored
 Infrastructure providers can allow customers’ to run applications off their
infrastructure, but transparent to the end user
 Customers can utilize greater computing power while saving on the
following
 Cost
 Space
 Power Consumption
 Facility

Platform:
Cloud platform services or "Platform as a Service (PaaS)" deliver a computing
platform and/or solution stack as a service, often consuming cloud
infrastructure and sustaining cloud applications. It facilitates deployment of
applications without the cost and complexity of buying and managing the
underlying hardware and software layers.

 Cloud platform services or "Platform as a Service (PaaS)" deliver a

computing platform and/or solution stack as a service, often consuming
cloud infrastructure and sustaining cloud applications.
  It facilitates deployment of applications without the cost and complexity of
buying and managing the underlying hardware and software layers.

Infrastructure:

Cloud infrastructure services, also known as "Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)",

delivers computer infrastructure - typically a platform virtualization environment -
as a service.
Rather than purchasing servers, software, data-center space or network equipment,
clients instead buy those resources as a fully outsourced service. Suppliers
typically bill such services on a utility computing basis and amount of resources
consumed (and therefore the cost) will typically reflect the level of activity.
IaaS evolved from virtual private server offerings. Cloud infrastructure often takes
the form of a tier 3 data center with many tier 4 attributes, assembled from
hundreds of virtual machines.
 Infrastructure providers can dynamically allocate resources for service
providers
 Service providers offer this service to end users
 Allows cost savings for the service providers, since they
 do not need to operate their own datacenter
 Ad hoc systems allow quick customization to consumer
Demands

Server:

The server’s layer consists of computer hardware and/or computer

software products that are specifically designed for the delivery of cloud services,
including multi-core processors, cloud-specific operating systems and combined
offerings.

The server’s layer consists of computer hardware and/or computer

software products that are specifically designed for the delivery of cloud services,
including multi-core processors, cloud-specific operating systems and combined
offerings.

Deployment models:
1. Public cloud
2. Community cloud
3. Hybrid cloud
4. Private cloud
These are the basic models available in the cloud concept.

Public cloud:
Public cloud or external cloud describes cloud computing in the traditional main
stream sense, whereby resources are dynamically provisioned on a fine-grained,
self-service basis over the Internet, via web applications/web services, from an off-
site third-party provider who bills on a fine-grained utility computing basis.
  A public cloud may be established where several organizations have similar
requirements
 Public clouds are run by third parties, and applications from different
customers are likely to be mixed together on the cloud’s servers, storage
systems, and networks
Community cloud:
A community cloud may be established where several organizations have
similar requirements and seek to share infrastructure so as to realize some of the
benefits of cloud computing. With the costs spread over fewer users than
a public cloud (but more than a single tenant) this option is more expensive but
may offer a higher level of privacy, security and/or policy compliance.
Examples of community cloud include Google's "Gov Cloud".
Hybrid cloud:
There is some confusion over the term "hybrid" when applied to the cloud - a
standard definition of the term "Hybrid Cloud" has not yet emerged. The term
"hybrid cloud" has been used to mean either two separate clouds joined together
(public, private, internal or external), or a combination of virtualized cloud server
instances used together with real physical hardware.
The most correct definition of the term "hybrid cloud" is probably the use of
physical hardware and virtualized cloud server instances together to provide a
single common service. Two clouds that have been joined together are more
correctly called a "combined cloud".
A combined cloud environment consisting of multiple internal and/or external
providers "will be typical for most enterprises".By integrating multiple cloud
services users may be able to ease the transition to public cloud services while
avoiding issues such as PCI compliance.
Another perspective on deploying a web application in the cloud is using Hybrid
Web Hosting, where the hosting infrastructure is a mix between cloud hosting
and managed dedicated servers - this is most commonly achieved as part of a web
cluster in which some of the nodes are running on real physical hardware and some
are running on cloud server instances.
A hybrid storage cloud uses a combination of public and private storage clouds.
Hybrid storage clouds are often useful for archiving and backup functions,
allowing local data to be replicated to a public cloud.
  Hybrid clouds combine both public and private cloud models

 to provide on-demand, externally provisioned scale

 used to handle planned workload spikes

Private cloud:
Douglas Park hill first described the concept of a "private computer utility" in his
1966 book The Challenge of the Computer Utility.
The idea was based upon direct comparison with other industries (e.g. the
electricity industry) and the extensive use of hybrid supply models to balance and
mitigate risks.
Private cloud and internal cloud have been described as neologisms; however the
concepts themselves pre-date the term cloud by 40 years.
Even within modern utility industries, hybrid models still exist despite the
formation of reasonably well-functioning markets and the ability to combine
multiple providers.
Some vendors have used the terms to describe offerings that emulate cloud
computing on private networks.
These (typically virtualization automation) products offer the ability to host
applications or virtual machines in a company's own set of hosts.
These provide the benefits of utility computing -shared hardware costs, the ability
to recover from failure, and the ability to scale up or down depending upon
demand.
Private clouds have attracted criticism because users "still have to buy, build, and
manage them" and thus do not benefit from lower up-front capital costs and less
hands-on management, essentially "[lacking] the economic model that makes cloud
computing such an intriguing concept". 
Enterprise IT organizations use their own private cloud(s) for mission critical and
other operational systems to protect critical infrastructures.
  Are built for the exclusive use of one client
 providing the extreme control over data, security, and quality of service
 The company owns the infrastructure and has control over how applications
are deployed on it.

7.Cloud engineering:
Cloud engineering is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable, and
interdisciplinary approach to the ideation, conceptualization, development,
operation, and maintenance of cloud computing, as well as the study and applied
research of the approach, i.e., the application of engineering to cloud.

It is a maturing and evolving discipline to facilitate the adoption, strategization,

operationalization, industrialization, standardization, productization,
commoditization, and governance of cloud solutions, leading towards a cloud
ecosystem Cloud engineering is also known as cloud service engineering.

Cloud storage is a model of networked computer data storage where data is stored

on multiple virtual servers, generally hosted by third parties, rather than being
hosted on dedicated servers.

Cloud engineering is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable, and

interdisciplinary approach to the ideation, conceptualization, development,
operation, and maintenance of cloud computing, as well as the study and applied
research of the approach, i.e., the application of engineering to cloud.

Private clouds have attracted criticism because users "still have to buy, build, and
manage them" and thus do not benefit from lower up-front capital costs and less
hands-on management.

8. Cloud storage:
Cloud storage is a model of networked computer data storage where data is stored
on multiple virtual servers, generally hosted by third parties, rather than being
hosted on dedicated servers.

 Hosting companies operate large data centers; and people who require their data to
be hosted buy or lease storage capacity from them and use it for their storage
needs.

The data center operators, in the background, virtualized the resources according to

the requirements of the customer and expose them as virtual servers, which the
customers can themselves manage. Physically, the resource may span across
multiple servers.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-130, Management of

Federal Information Resources, requires Federal agencies to plan for security. The
following security requirements apply to services that may be provided in
individual task orders issued under this BPA.

After award of the BPA(s), the Quoter shall be responsible for the deliverable
products on firm-fixed price basis within the schedules contained in the individual
task orders.

Deliverables listed below should be accessible via online interface not later than 10
days after the end of the calendar month and available for up to one year after
creation. The information shall be available in comma separated values (CSV) file
format. The Quoter shall provide non-cumulative monthly reports for the items
described in the table below for.

9. The inter cloud:

The Intercloud is an interconnected global "cloud of clouds" and an extension of
the Internet "network of networks" on which it is based. 
The term was first used in the context of cloud computing in 2007 when Kevin
Kelly stated that "eventually we'll have the inter cloud, the cloud of clouds.
This Inter cloud will have the dimensions of one machine comprising all servers
and attendant cloud books on the planet." It became popular in 2009 and has also
been used to describe the datacenter of the future.
The Inter cloud scenario is based on the key concept that each single cloud does
not have infinite physical resources.
If a cloud saturates the computational and storage resources of its virtualization
infrastructure, it could not be able to satisfy further requests for service allocations
sent from its clients.
The Inter cloud scenario aims to address such situation, and in theory, each cloud
can use the computational and storage resources of the virtualization
infrastructures of other clouds.
Such form of pay-for-use may introduce new business opportunities among cloud
providers if they manage to go beyond theoretical framework.
Nevertheless, the Inter cloud raises many more challenges than solutions
concerning cloud federation, security, and interoperability, quality of service,
vendor's lock-ins, trust, legal issues, monitoring and billing.
The concept of a competitive utility computing market which combined many
computer utilities together was originally described by Douglas Park hill in his
1966 book, the "Challenge of the Computer Utility".
This concept has been subsequently used many times over the last 40 years and is
identical to the Inter cloud.

10. Issues:
1. Privacy
 2. Compliance
3. Legal
4. Open source
5. Open standards
6. Security
7. Availability and performances
8. Sustainability and sitting

Privacy:

The cloud model has been criticized by privacy advocates for the greater ease in
which the companies hosting the cloud services control, and thus, can monitor
at will, lawfully or unlawfully, the communication and data stored between the
user and the host company.
Instances such as the secret NSA program, working with AT&T, and Verizon,
which recorded over 10 million phone calls between American citizens, causes
uncertainty among privacy advocates, and the greater powers it gives to
telecommunication companies to monitor user activity.
While there have been efforts (such as US-EU Safe Harbor) to "harmonize" the
legal environment, providers such as Amazon still cater to major markets
(typically the United States and the European Union) by deploying local
infrastructure and allowing customers to select "availability zones.

In a Web Hosting scenario, the Quoter is responsible for securing, monitoring,

and maintaining the infrastructure as described above, plus the Web Server.
Software and supporting software (i.e., any data base management systems.)
The Consumer Agency is responsible for securing and maintaining the web
application. If individual (named) user access is required, the specific Service
Level Agreement shall document who is responsible for creating, and maintaining
user accounts.
Compliance:

In order to obtain compliance with regulations

Including FISMA, HIPAA and SOX in the United States, the Data Protection
Directive in the EU and the credit card industry's PCI DSS, users may have to
adopt community or hybrid deployment modes which are typically more expensive
and may offer restricted benefits.
This is how Google is able to "manage and meet additional government policy
requirements beyond FISMA" and Rack spaces Cloud are able to claim PCI
compliance.
Customers in the EU contracting with cloud providers established outside the
EU/EEA have to adhere to the EU regulations on export of personal data.
Many providers also obtain SAS 70 Type II certification (e.g. Amazon,
Salesforce.com.
Google and Microsoft but this has been criticised on the grounds that the hand-
picked set of goals and standards determined by the auditor and the auditee are
often not disclosed and can vary widely.
 
Providers typically make this information available on request, under non-
disclosure agreement.

Legal:

In March 2007, Dell applied to trademark the term "cloud computing" (U.S.

Trademark 77,139,082) in the United States.
The "Notice of Allowance" the company received in July 2008 was canceled in
August, resulting in a formal rejection of the trademark application less than a
week later. Since 2007, the number of trademark filings covering cloud computing
brands, goods and services has increased at an almost exponential rate.
As companies sought to better position themselves for cloud computing branding
and marketing efforts, cloud computing trademark filings increased by 483%
between 2008 and 2009.
In 2009, 116 cloud computing trademarks were filed, and trademark analysts
predict that over 500 such marks could be filed during 2010.
Other legal cases may shape the use of cloud computing by the public sector. On
October 29, 2010, Google filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Interior,
which opened up a bid for software that required that bidders use Microsoft's
Business Productivity Online Suite. Google sued, calling the requirement "unduly
restrictive of competition.
“Scholars have pointed out that, beginning in 2005, the prevalence of open
standards and open source may have an impact on the way that public entities
choose to select vendors.

Open source:
Open source software has provided the foundation for many cloud computing
implementations. In November 2007, the Free Software Foundation released the
Affero General Public License, a version of GPLv3 intended to close a
perceived legal loophole associated with free software designed to be run over a
network.
Below provides GSA’s minimum requirements for a Moderate Impact Cloud
Computing (CC) Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Offering.
In CC, security responsibilities are shared between the Quoter and the Consumer,
in this case a Federal Government Agency.
The Quoter is responsible for provisioning, securing, monitoring, and maintaining
the hardware, network(s), and software that support the infrastructure and present
Virtual Machines (VMs) and IT resources to the consumer.
On its part, the Consumer Agency is responsible for the security of the “guest”
Operating System (OS) and any additional software, up to and including the
applications running on the guest OS.

Open standards:
Most cloud providers expose APIs which are typically well-documented (often
under a Creative Commons license) but also unique to their implementation and
thus not interoperable.
Some vendors have adopted others' APIs and there are a number of open standards
under development, including the OGF'sOpen Cloud Computing Interface.
The Open Cloud Consortium (OCC) is working to develop consensus on early
cloud computing standards and practices.

In a Web Hosting scenario, the Quoter is responsible for securing, monitoring, and
maintaining the infrastructure as described above, plus the Web Server software
and supporting software (i.e., any data base management systems.)
The Consumer Agency is responsible for securing and maintaining the web
application.
If individual (named) user access is required, the specific Service Level
Agreement shall document who is responsible for creating, and maintaining user
accounts.

Security:

The relative security of cloud computing services is a contentious issue which may
be delaying its adoption. 
Issues barring the adoption of cloud computing are due in large part to the private
and public sectors unease surrounding the external management of security based
services.
It is the very nature of cloud computing based services, private or public, that
promote external management of provided services.
This delivers great incentive amongst cloud computing service providers in
producing a priority in building and maintaining strong management of secure
services.

Organizations have been formed in order to provide standards for a better future in
cloud computing services. One organization in particular, the Cloud Security
Alliance is a non-profit organization formed to promote the use of best practices
for providing security assurance within cloud computing.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-130, Management of
Federal Information Resources, requires Federal agencies to plan for security.

The following security requirements apply to services that may be provided in

individual task orders issued under this BPA.

The Government and the Contractor will work in good faith to establish an
Interconnection Security Agreement (ISA) and/or a Memorandum of
Understanding (MOU) as provided in the National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) Special Publication 800-47, Security Guide for
Interconnecting Information Technology Systems, Section D.7 - Security
Requirements.

The Government’s intent is to accept the Contractor’s commercial information

security practices that are functionally equivalent to those provided by NIST
Special Publication 800-53, Recommended Security Controls for Federal
Information Systems, for moderate impact systems.

Availability and performance:

In addition to concerns about security, businesses are also worried about
acceptable levels of availability and performance of applications hosted in the
cloud.
There are also concerns about a cloud provider shutting down for financial or legal
reasons, which has happened in a number of cases.

Sustainability and siting:

Although cloud computing is often assumed to be a form of "green computing",
there is as of yet no published study to substantiate this assumption. 
Siting the servers affects the environmental effects of cloud computing.
In areas where climate favors natural cooling and renewable electricity is readily
available, the environmental effects will be more moderate.
Thus countries with favorable conditions, such as Finland, Sweden and
Switzerland, are trying to attract cloud computing data centers.
Smart Bay, marine research infrastructure of sensors and computational
technology, is being developed using cloud computing, an emerging approach to
shared infrastructure in which large pools of systems are linked together to provide
IT services.

11. SERVICES AND PRICES

Scope

The scope of this RFQ focuses on IaaS service offerings available within a public
cloud deployment model. The implementation is a Moderate Impact System as
defined in National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) Federal
Information Processing Standard (FIPS) Publication 199 (Section D7. – Security
Requirements).

Federal Cloud Computing Framework

The Cloud Computing Framework, illustrated below, provides a high-level

overview of the key functional components for cloud computing services for the
Government.

The Cloud Computing Framework is neither architecture nor an operating model.

The Framework is a functional view of the key capabilities required to enable
Cloud Computing.

As depicted in the Figure 1 below, the framework consists of three major

categories:

 Cloud Service Delivery Capabilities - Core capabilities required to deliver

Cloud Services
 Cloud Services – Services delivered by the Cloud
 Cloud User Tools – Tools or capabilities that enable users to provision,
manage, and use the Cloud services

Figure 1: Federal Cloud Computing Framework

 Cloud Services

The Horizontal functional areas represent the core “computing” capabilities that
enable different levels of Cloud Computing, while the vertical functional areas
illustrate the management and business capabilities needed to wrap-around the core
components to enable business processes with Cloud Computing. For example,
Reporting and Analytics offer the ability to perform key reporting and business
intelligence analytics and therefore are not core Cloud Computing components;
however, analytics offer significant business capabilities that can harness the
power of the data that will reside within the Cloud Computing environment.
GSA Cloud Computing Storefront

The initial acquisition of these services will be facilitated by GSA through the
GSA Cloud Computing Storefront Site – which will enable Government
purchasers to buy (using a credit card or other acceptable payment option) IaaS
service offerings as needed through a common Web Portal, such as apps.gov,
which will be managed and maintained by GSA.

Figure 2: GSA Cloud Computing Storefront

IaaS Providers Government Agencies

Once IaaS Services are procured

IaaS Vendor 1 the Federal Agency works directly
with the selected IaaS vendor in Federal
configuring and utilizing the
Agency 1
services via the Internet
IaaS Vendor 2
4 Federal
IaaS Vendor n Internet Agency 2

Federal
Agency n

1
3
GSA Cloud
Based on Federal Agency’s selection, Storefront Federal Agencies inquire and procure IaaS
the GSA Cloud Storefront enables the (Web Portal) service through the GSA Cloud Storefront
procurement of IaaS services with the
vendor.
2
The GSA Federal Cloud Storefront provides the
predefined IaaS service offering options from the
supported IaaS vendors based on the submitted
inquires from the Federal Agency

Tasks

The requirements focus on IaaS service offerings, specifically for Storage Services,
Virtual Machines (VM), and Cloud Web hosting service.

Requirements have been established for each of the IaaS functional components
within the Federal Cloud Framework described above as required (mandatory).
The Government shall retain ownership of any user created/loaded data and an
application hosted on vendor’s infrastructure, and maintains the right to request
full copies of these at any time.

The requirements are divided into three categories as follows:

 General Cloud Computing Requirements – specifies general requirements

for cloud services.

 IaaS Service Offering (Lot 1, 2, and 3) Requirements – specifies the

requirements for service offerings along with their attributes and the
purchase units.

 IaaS Technical Requirements – specifies the technical requirements for

enabling the IaaS service offerings.
Cloud Technical Requirements

The Quoter shall provide a Cloud Computing solution that aligns to the following
“Essential Characteristics” as defined in the National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) Working Definition and described in Table 1 below:

Table 1: Cloud Technical Requirements

Cloud Definition General Requirement

Characteristic

1. On-demand self- A consumer can unilaterally The Quoter shall provide

service provision computing the capability for the
capabilities, such as server time ordering activity to
Cloud Definition General Requirement
Characteristic
and network storage, as needed unilaterally (i.e. without
automatically without requiring vendor review or
human interaction with each approval) provision
service’s provider. services.

2. Ubiquitous Capabilities are available over 2a. The Quoter shall

network access the network and accessed support internet
through standard mechanisms bandwidth of at least
that promote use by 1Gb/s
heterogeneous thin or thick
client platforms (e.g., mobile
phones, laptops, and PDAs). 2b. The Quoter shall have
a minimum of two data
center facilities at two
different geographic
locations in the
Continental United States
(CONUS) and all services
acquired under the BPA
will be guaranteed to
reside in CONUS.
3. Location The provider’s computing The Quoter shall support
independent resources are pooled to serve all provisioning of practically
resource pooling consumers using a multi-tenant unlimited storage,
model, with different physical computing capacity,
and virtual resources memory at 1000 times our
dynamically assigned and minimum resource unit
reassigned according to metrics, independently
consumer demand. The customer from the physical location
generally has no control or of the facilities.
knowledge over the exact
Cloud Definition General Requirement
Characteristic
location of the provided
resources but may be able to
specify location at a higher level
of abstraction (e.g., country,
state, or datacenter). Examples
of resources include storage,
processing, memory, network
bandwidth, and virtual
machines.

4. Rapid elasticity Capabilities can be rapidly and The Quoter shall support
elastically provisioned to service provisioning and
quickly scale up and rapidly de-provisioning times
released to quickly scale down. (scale up/down), making
To the consumer, the capabilities the service available
available for provisioning often within near real-time of
appear to be infinite and can be provisioning request.
purchased in any quantity at any
time.

5. Measured Cloud systems automatically The Quoter shall offer

Service control and optimize resource visibility into service
use by leveraging a metering usage via dashboard or
capability at some level of similar electronic means.
abstraction appropriate to the
type of service (e.g., storage,
processing, bandwidth, and
active user accounts). Resource
usage can be monitored,
controlled, and reported
Cloud Definition General Requirement
Characteristic
providing transparency for both
the provider and consumer of the
utilized service.

IaaS Technical Requirements

This section specifies the requirements that are applicable to all three (3) Lots as
mentioned in Section C.4.3. The requirements for this section are divided into the
following areas: Service Management and Provisioning; User/Admin Portal;
integration requirements; and data center facilities requirements.

Service Management and Provisioning Requirements

Service Management and Provisioning requirements address the technical

requirements for supporting the provisioning and service management of the IaaS
Service Offerings described in Section 4.3 of this document. Service provisioning
focuses on capabilities required to assign services to users, allocate resources, and
services and the monitoring and management of these resources.

Table 2: Service Management and Provisioning Requirements

Service 1. The Quoter shall provide the ability to provision virtual

Provisioning machines, storage and bandwidth dynamically (or on-
demand), as requested. This shall include any traffic
shaping capabilities the Quoter uses.

2. The Quoter shall enable Service Provisioning via

customizable online portal/interface (tools).

3. The Quoter shall enable Service Provisioning via

Application Programming Interface (API).
 4. Quoter shall support secure provisioning, de-provisioning
and administering [such as Secure Sockets Layer
(SSL)/Transport Layer Security (TLS) or Secure Shell
(SSH)] in its service offerings.

5. The Quoter shall support the terms of service requirement of

terminating the service at any time (on-demand).

6. The Quoter shall provide a custom webpage and associated

Uniform Resource Locator (URL) that describes the
following:

a. Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

b. Help Desk and Technical Support
c. Resources (Documentation, Articles/Tutorials, etc)

7. The Quoter shall make the Management Reports described

in Section 6 accessible via online interface. These reports
shall be available for one year after being created.

Service 8. The Quoter shall provide a robust, fault tolerant

Level infrastructure that allows for high availability of 99.5%.
Agreement 9. The Quoter shall document and adhere to their SLAs to
Management include:
 Service Availability (Measured as Total Uptime Hours /
Total Hours within the Month) displayed as a percentage
of availability up to one-tenth of a percent (e.g. 99.5%)

 Within a month of a major outage occurrence resulting

in greater than 1-hour of unscheduled downtime. The
Quoter shall describe the outage including description of
 root-cause and fix.
 Service provisioning and de-provisioning times (scale up
and down) in near real-time
10.The Quoter shall provide Helpdesk and Technical support
services to include system maintenance windows.
Operational 11.The Quoter shall manage the network, storage, server and
Management virtualization layer, to include performance of internal
technology refresh cycles applicable to this BPA.

12.The Quoter shall provide a secure, dual factor method of

remote access which allows Government designated
personnel the ability to perform duties on the hosted
infrastructure.

13.The Quoter shall perform patch management appropriate to

the scope of their control.

14.The Quoter shall provide the artifacts, security policies and

procedures demonstrating its compliance with the the
Security Assessment and Authorization requirements as
described in Section D7 – Security Requirements.

DR and 15.The Quoter shall ensure the security of the services and data
COOP hosted at their facilities by providing DR (Disaster
Recovery) and COOP (Continuity of Operations)
capabilities.

16.The Quoter shall perform backup, recovery and refresh

operations on a periodic basis.
Data 17.The Quoter shall manage data isolation in a multi-tenant
Management environment.

18.The Quoter shall transfer data back in-house either on

demand or in case of contract or order termination for any
 reason.

19.The Quoter shall manage data remanence throughout the

data life cycle.

20.The Quoter shall provide security mechanisms for handling

data at rest and in transit.

User/Admin Portal Requirements

Table 3 below describes User/Admin management requirements:

Table 3: User/Admin Portal Requirements

Order 21.The Quoter shall enable Order Management via

Management customizable online portal/interface (tools).

22.The Quoter should enable Order Management via

Application Programming Interface (API).
 
Billing/Invoice 23.The Quoter shall provide on-line billing capability that
Tracking will allow customers to see the status of their bills
(updated weekly).

24.The Quoter shall provide the ability for the customer

agency to track the status of their invoices.

25.The individual task orders issued under this BPA will

specify a monthly ceiling dollar limitation.  When 80%
of this dollar limit has been reached, the Quoter shall
 notify the user, by email and by posting that notification
to the website, that the quoter is approaching the 80%
threshold for the order.  The Quoter shall not bill beyond
the approved monthly dollar threshold.

Utilization 26.The Quoter shall provide automatic monitoring of

Monitoring resource utilization and other events such as failure of
service, degraded service, etc. via service dashboard or
other electronic means.
Trouble 27.The Quoter shall provide Trouble Ticketing via
Management customizable online portal/interface (tools).

28.The Quoter should provide Trouble Ticketing via API.

User Profile 29.The Quoter shall maintain user profiles and present the
Management user with his/her profile at the time of login.

Integration Requirements

Table 4 describes Integration requirements for cloud services.

Table 4: Integration Requirements

Application 30.The Quoter shall provide support to all API’s it

Programmin develops/provides.
g Interfaces
(APIs)

Data Center Facilities Requirements

Table 5 describes Data Center Facilities requirements.

Table 5: Data Center Facilities Requirements

Internet 31.The Quoter shall identify Tier 1 Internet service providers it

Access is peered with, and where this peering occurs. A Tier 1
network is an IP network that participates in
the Internet solely via Settlement Free Interconnection, also
known as settlement free peering. The Quoter shall provide
its Autonomous Number System
Firewalls 32.The Quoter shall implement a firewall policy that allows the
Government to administer it remotely, or the Quoter shall
administer a firewall policy in accordance with the
Government’s direction, allowing the Government to have
read-only access to inspect the firewall configuration.

LAN/WAN 33.The Quoter ‘s Local Area Network (LAN) shall not impede
data transmission.

34.The Quoter shall provide a Wide Area Network (WAN),

with a minimum of two data center facilities at two different
geographic locations in the Continental United States
(CONUS) and all services acquired under the BPA will be
guaranteed to reside in CONUS. The Quoter shall provide
Internet bandwidth at the minimum of 1 GB.

35.IP Addressing:

1) The Quoter should provide IP address assignment, and if

capable, include Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
(DHCP).

2) The Quoter shall provide IP address and IP port

assignment on external network interfaces.

3) The Quoter should provide dedicated virtual private

 network (VPN) connectivity between customer and the
vendor.

4) The Quoter shall allow mapping IP addresses to domains

owned by the Government, allowing websites or other
applications operating in the cloud to be viewed externally
as Government URLs and services.

5) The Quoter shall provide an infrastructure that is IPv6

capable.

Data Center 36.The Quoter shall provide data center facilities including
Facilities space, power, physical infrastructure (hardware). Upon
request from the Government, the hosting Quoter shall
provide access to the hosting facility for inspection.

37.The Quoter shall provide data center facilities and the

physical and virtual hardware that are located within the
Continental United States of America (CONUS).

Lot Specific Technical Requirements

The IaaS Service Offering Requirements have been divided into three distinct Lots:

 Lot 1: Cloud Storage Services (Section C.4.3.1)

 Lot 2: Virtual Machines (Section C.4.3.2)
 Lot 3: Cloud Web Hosting (Section C.4.3.3)

The following sections describe the service, service options, service attributes, and
service units for the three Lots.
12. Research:

A number of universities, vendors and government organizations are investing in

research around the topic of cloud computing.
 Academic institutions include University of Melbourne (Australia), Georgia Tech,
Yale, Wayne State, Virginia Tech, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Carnegie
Mellon, MIT, Indiana University, University of Massachusetts, University of
Maryland, IIT Bombay, North Carolina State University, Purdue University,
University of California, University of Washington, University of Virginia,
University of Utah, University of Minnesota, among others.
Joint government, academic and vendor collaborative research projects include the
IBM/Google Academic Cloud Computing Initiative (ACCI). In October
2007IBM and Google announced the multi- university project designed to enhance
students' technical knowledge to address the challenges of cloud computing.
In April 2009, the National Science Foundation joined the ACCI and awarded
approximately $5 million in grants to 14 academic institutions.
In July 2008, HP, Intel Corporation and Yahoo! announced the creation of a
global, multi-data center, open source test bed, called Open Cirrus, designed to
encourage research into all aspects of cloud computing, service and data center
management.Open Cirrus partners include the NSF, the University of Illinois
(UIUC), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the Infocomm Development Authority
(IDA) of Singapore, the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute
(ETRI) in Korea, the Malaysian Institute for Microelectronic Systems(MIMOS),
and the Institute for System Programming at the Russian Academy of Sciences
(ISPRAS).
 In Sept. 2010, more researchers joined the HP/Intel/Yahoo Open Cirrus project for
cloud computing research.
The new researchers are China Mobile Research Institute (CMRI), Spain's
Supercomputing Center of Galicia (CESGA by its Spanish acronym), Georgia
Tech's Center for Experimental Research in Computer Systems (CERCS) and
China Telecom.
In July 2010, HP Labs India announced a new cloud-based technology designed to
simplify taking content and making it mobile-enabled, even from low-end devices.
 Called Siteon Mobile, the new technology is designed for emerging markets where
people are more likely to access the internet via mobile phones rather than
computers. 
In Nov. 2010, HP formally opened its Government Cloud Theatre, located at the
HP Labs site in Bristol, England. 
The demonstration facility highlights high-security, highly flexible cloud
computing based on intellectual property developed at HP Labs.
The aim of the facility is to lessen fears about the security of the cloud. HP Labs
Bristol is HP’s second-largest central research location and currently is responsible
for researching cloud computing and security.
The IEEE Technical Committee on Services Computing in IEEE Computer
Society sponsors the IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing
(CLOUD).
CLOUD 2010 was held on July 5–10, 2010 in Miami, Florida.
13. Criticism of the term:

Some have come to criticize the term as being either too unspecific or even
misleading.
CEO Larry Ellison of Oracle Corporation asserts that cloud computing is
"everything that we already do", claiming that the company could simply "change
the wording on some of our ads" to deploy their cloud-based services.
Forrester Research VP Frank Gillett questions the very nature of and motivation
behind the push for cloud computing, describing what he calls "cloud washing" in
the industry whereby companies relabel their products as cloud computing
resulting in a lot of marketing innovation on top of real innovation.
GNU's Richard Stallman insists that the industry will only use the model to deliver
services at ever increasing rates over proprietary systems, otherwise likening it to a
"marketing hype campaign.
See also

 Cloud backup
 Cloud engineering
 Cloud gaming
 Data center
 Green computing
 High-performance computing
 List of cloud computing providers
Open Data Center Alliance
 14. Conclusion:
 Cloud computing is a better way to run your business..
 Finally, cloud apps don’t eat up your valuable IT resources, so your CFO
will love it.
 This lets you focus on deploying more apps, new projects, and innovation
Future personal uses:
 No more backing up files to thumb drives or syncing computers together
 Services replace devices
 A single hard drive for the rest of a person’s life, accessible anywhere with
internet
Future educational uses:
 An expansion of Microsoft live@edu
 View Video
 More useful spending of technology budgets
 Classroom collaboration
 View an example from AirSet.com Take a quick tour
 Office Web Applications
 Google Docs
 View Video
Cloud computing is a simple idea, but it can have a huge impact on your
business.

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