Cloud computing

With the emergence of Cloud Services spanning one or many cloud infrastructures managed by various providers, it is imperative that a checklist be developed that provides cloud services lifecycle guidance/requirements for service providers/developers as they integrate these lifecycle functions.
The goal driven checklist is to be developed with the purpose to facilitate the following six lifecycle functions from a cloud service provider. These lifecycle functions can be aggregated in the three categories of build, capture, and modify to facilitate a simpler description of the goals.

• Assessment and acceptance (i.e., build) of services onto the cloud platform/infrastructure.
• Ongoing audit (i.e., capture) of services on the cloud platform/infrastructure.
• Augmentation, abridging, and annulment (i.e., modify) of services within the cloud platform/infrastructure.

The goal of the checklist is to realize greater efficiencies through formalization and automation of integrations between cloud service providers and their corollary actors during the cloud services lifecycle. While the focus in this document is on the cloud services lifecycle, note that the unique goal oriented approach and related paradigms described herein could also be applied elsewhere.

Virtual desktop services enable enterprise IT organizations to logically centralize desktop resources so as to reduce desktop management costs and support any-device, any-network access to desktops by end-users. The emergence of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure as a service additionally allows enterprise IT organizations to take advantage of cloud resources instead of building their own infrastructures. As a result, enterprises can further reduce IT costs.
This document describes the virtual desktop (VD) requirements for enterprise services and specifies a federation framework for deploying VD services across multiple networks and administrative domains. In particular, the framework allows cloud service providers to host VD services for enterprises and at the same time maintain seamless network connectivity to enterprise resources. For the sake of end-user experience, it is essential that VD sessions can be transparently moved between data centers or between service providers without compromising security and isolation. Such transparent migration of VD session poses significant requirements on the underlying networks, which are also addressed by this document.

The ATIS Cloud Services Forum is examining a number of services that establish the foundation for development, operations, deployment, and management of cloud-based services. These include content delivery, telepresence, and virtual desktop. Video services, including the already-present one-way and growing two-way communications, will be a substantial catalyst for additional growth and expansion of the Internet. Telepresence services provide a business model and architectural model that are foundational to cloud services, and provide important elements of the Cloud Services Data Model for Cloud Service Enablers. This specification focuses on telepresence services, recognizing that telepresence services are an integral part of a broader unified communications solution set.
There are many aspects of the telepresence service. This is an evolving document establishing a foundation for continuing work efforts. The specification explores a provider-agnostic and product-agnostic implementation, and will consider two primary aspects of the telepresence service that are detailed here by the examination of use cases deployed today and those resulting in the application of "the cloud" and other aspects of business and technology architecture guiding service evolution in the future. First, a description of the telepresence service is provided. Second, a more detailed description of the two key aspects of the telepresence service is provided. Topics 2f and 2g detail aspects of telepresence interconnectivity which will be addressed in a future specification.

The concept of a Federated Cloud comprised of interconnected Service Providers (SP) was introduced in ATIS Standard ATIS-0200003, CDN Interconnection Use Case Specifications and High Level Requirements [https://global.ihs.com/doc_detail.cfm?&csf=ASA&input_doc_number=%20&inpu.... This initial standard described the role of the SPs in the cloud as distributors of content from Content Providers (CP) to End Users (EU). Thus, SPs serve as Content Distribution Network (CDN) Providers. The set of content delivery Life Cycle interactions between two CDN Providers is defined in ATIS-0200003. The method for content distribution in ATIS-0200003 was limited to Unicast Cache-based distribution.
Under certain conditions depending on network configurations and type of content, it may be advantageous to distribute content via Multicast methods. From a network perspective, Multicast is scalable and results in significant savings in efficiencies and capacity utilization.
The purpose of this ATIS Standard is to introduce Multicast-based content distribution. This standard provides the following:

• Overview of the Multicast delivery mechanism
• Set of content types that are suitable for delivery via Multicast methods
• Description of various Multicast methods that can be deployed to interconnect two CDN Providers and distribute content.

The scope of this Standard is limited to use cases and requirements to support the interactions between two CDN Providers for content distribution via Multicast. The Use Cases describe:

1. Generic interactions supporting Life Cycle Multicast use between two CDN Providers.
2. Specific Multicast configurations/scenarios that can be deployed for interconnection and content distribution.

Multicast related specifics to support Billing, Provisioning, Reporting, and other network functions will be covered in future ATIS documents. Multicast-based content delivery to mobility-based End User devices is for further study.

Regional cloud providers that operate data centers and associated wide-area networking across their region are well positioned to cooperatively build a global cloud infrastructure with other regional cloud providers, and thus, become a valuable party for Content and Application Providers (CPs and APs). We call the formalization of such cooperation a federated cloud. In a federated cloud, application and/or content requests placed to a cloud provider can be served locally -- e.g., by a supporting cloud provider, even when this supporting cloud provider only has an indirect relationship to the AP or CP by way of a primary cloud provider. In this case, a primary cloud provider is defined as the cloud provider with which an AP or CP has a direct contractual arrangement for cloud services. A federated cloud member simultaneously acts as a primary cloud provider and a supporting cloud provider as defined by their relationship with different APs and CPs.
 
In a federated cloud, part or all of each individual provider's compute, storage, and networking resources become part of a federated pool of cloud resources. Management systems of these individual (regional) cloud providers are linked to facilitate end-to-end cloud services capability. By definition, a federated cloud includes a clearing house to settle expenditures and revenues of the end-to-end cloud services based on agreed methods, interfaces, and procedures for settlement.

This document presents the NIST Federated Cloud Reference Architecture model. This actor/role based model used the guiding principles of the NIST Cloud Computing Reference Architecture to develop an 11 component model which are described individually and how they function as an ensemble. There are many possible deployments and governance options which lend themselves to create a suite of federation options from simple to complex. The basics of cloud federation can be described through the interactions of the actors in a layered three planes representation of trust, security, and resource sharing and usage. A discussion on possible future standards and use cases are also described in great detail.

The NIST Cloud Computing Security Working group was created to achieve broad collaboration between Federal and private stakeholders in efforts to address the security-related concerns expressed by Federal managers. One of the tasks of the NIST Cloud Computing Working Group is to design a Cloud Computing Security Reference Architecture that supplements SP 500-292: NIST Cloud Computing Reference Architecture (RA) with a formal model and identifies the core set of Security Components recommended for building a successful and secure cloud computing Ecosystem. The document provides for an understanding of the security interdependencies of cloud services, Actors, and requirements that USG agency technical planning and implementation teams and agency procurement offices should identify and address in order to acquire cloud services with security levels that meets agency needs.
Under development
(The group seems to be dormant after 2013)

The acute need of the multitude of smart, end-user IoT devices and near-user edge devices to carry out, with minimal latency, a substantial amount of data processing and to collaborate in a distributed way, triggered technology advancements towards adaptive, decentralized computational paradigms that complement the centralized cloud computing model serving IoT networks.
Researchers, computer scientists, system and network engineers developed innovative solutions to fill the technological gaps. These solutions provide faster approaches that gain better situational awareness in a far more timely manner. Such solutions or computational paradigms are referred to as fog computing, mist computing, cloudlets4, or edge computing5,6. Since no consensus exists on distinction among these concepts at the time this document was created, the authors considered it imperative to provide a conceptual model that can be used by practitioners and researchers to facilitate meaningful conversations on the topic.
This document provides the conceptual model of fog computing and its subsidiary mist computing, and aims to place these concepts in relation to cloud computing7 and edge computing.
Additionally, the document introduces the notion of a fog node and the nodes federation model composed of both, distributed and centralized, often hierarhical clusters of fog nodes operating in harmony. This model is introduced as a building-block architectural approach for constructing, enhancing or expanding the fog and mist computing layers.
Furthermore, the document characterizes important aspects of fog computing and is intended to serve as a means for broad comparisons of fog computing capabilities, service models and deployment strategies, and to provide a baseline for discussion of what fog computing is and the way it may be used.
The capabilities, service types and deployment models form a simple taxonomy that is not intended to prescribe or constrain any particular method of deployment, service delivery, or business operation.

Edge computing is increasingly used in systems that deal with aspects of the physical world. Edge computing involves the placement of processing and data storage near or at the places where those systems interact with the physical world, which is where the "edge" exists. One of the trends in this space is the development of increasingly capable IoT devices (sensors and actuators), generating more data or new types of data, which data benefits from processing close to the place where it is generated.
Cloud computing is commonly used in systems that utilise edge computing. This can involve the connection of both devices and edge computing nodes to centralized cloud services. However, it is the case that the locations in which cloud computing is performed are increasingly distributed in nature, with cloud services being implemented in locations that are nearer to the edge, for the purpose of supporting usecases that demand such close placement for reasons of reducing latency or avoiding the need to transmit large volumes of data over networks with limited bandwidth.
This document aims to describe edge computing and the significant elements which contribute to the successful implementation of edge computing systems, with an emphasis on the use of cloud computing and cloud computing technologies in the context of edge computing, including the virtualization of compute, storage and networking resources.
It is useful to read this document in conjunction with the ISO/IEC TR 30164 Edge Computing (under development in SC 41 - Internet of Things and related technologies), which takes a view of edge computing from the point of view of IoT systems and the IoT devices which interact with the physical world.
The scope of this technical report is to investigate and report on the concept of Edge Computing, its relationship to Cloud Computing and IoT, and the technologies that are key to the implementation of Edge Computing.  This report will explore the following topics with respect to Edge Computing:
- Concept of Edge Computing Systems
- Architectural Foundation of Edge Computing
- Edge Computing Terminology
- Software Classifications in Edge Computing – for example: firmware, services, applications 
- Supporting technologies such as Containers, Serverless, Microservices
- Networking for edge systems, including virtual networks
- Data – data flow, data storage, data processing in edge computing
- Management – of software, of data and of networks, resources, quality of service
- Virtual placement of software and data, and metadata
- Security and Privacy
- Real Time
- Mobile Edge Computing, Mobile Devices
 
Under development

As the adoption of cloud computing expands and the market grows, cloud service providers (CSPs) offer many different solutions of cloud services that can be classified as infrastructure, platform and application capabilities. Inevitably, CSPs, in designing solutions to meet the functionalities of cloud service customers (CSCs), put together diverse metering elements and billing modes that complement the cloud services offered to cloud service customers (CSCs).  It is challenging for CSCs to determine the differences of many diverse metering elements and billing modes from various CSPs as they navigate their journey to adopt cloud computing.
Measured service is one of the key characteristics of cloud computing (ISO/IEC 17788).  The feature is that a CSC may only be charged for the resources used.  To this end, it is necessary that usage can be monitored, controlled, reported, and billed for delivered cloud service.  Metering elements can be given and classified according to its cloud capabilities type.  Reasonable and scientific metering and billing results can be easily achieved if common operation practices apply.
The purpose of this TR is to provide basic clarity and guidance through a sample set of cloud service metering elements and billing elements for different cloud service capability types, including a discussion on billing function component and metering which is one of four main parts of billing function component. Such a sample set of metering and billing elements can help CSP better describe its billing and metering exercise, and can help CSC better understand the situation in order to make informed decisions.
The scope of this document is to describes a sample set of cloud service metering and billing elements.
 
Under development

This document establishes a set of building blocks (concepts, terms and definitions, including Data Level Objectives and Data Qualitative Objectives) that can be used to create Data Sharing Agreements  (DSAs). This document is applicable to DSAs where the data is intended to be processed using one or more cloud services or other distributed platforms.
 
Under development

In most cases, cloud service providers (CSPs) and cloud service customers (CSCs) negotiate service level agreements (SLAs) which include service level objectives (SLOs) and service qualitative objectives (SQOs) for which CSPs make commitments.. The commitments described in SLAs must be measured against actual performance of the service to ensure compliance with the SLA. How actual performance compares against commitments in SLAs, is explained in ISO/IEC 19086-2:2018[2] Metric model.  Cloud SLAs are covered in ISO/IEC 19086-1:2016[1] Service level agreement (SLA) framework Part 1:  Overview and concepts and in ISO/IEC 19086-4:2019[3] Security and privacy.
ISO/IEC 19086-2 Metric model establishes common terminology, defines a model for specifying metrics for cloud SLAs, and includes applications of the model with examples.  This document provides a primer on using the metrics model in 19086-2 to compose the calculation of a cloud service performance measure in order to compare against an SLA commitment. A few examples from the SLOs listed in ISO/IEC 19086-1 (Clause 10) are given in the document, such as Cloud Service Response Time Mean and Cloud Service Availability. As specific, measurable characteristics of a cloud service, SLOs are the basis for defining the metrics used to evaluate and compare agreements between parties.
In the second half of the document, a basic dissection of these examples is provided using a practical method based on a tabular format. This  format allows for a consistent usage of the model across practitioners such as:
- Extracting metric material from an SLA narrative and representing this content separately and unambiguously.
- Designing and representing a new metric definition.
Along with demonstrating this method on previous examples, some best practices are collected and reported.  These best practices also provide practical guidance on how to extend or complement the model when necessary, which is allowed by the 19086-2 Metric model standard but beyond its scope and non-normative.
The scope of this technical report is to describe a practical method for using ISO/IEC 19086-2 Metric Model.
 
Under development