| By Scott Morrison |
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| May 16, 2011 12:30 PM EDT |
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735 |
What is the cloud, really? Never before have we had a technology that suffers so greatly from such a completely ambiguous name. Gartner Research VP Paolo Malinverno has observed that most organizations define cloud as any application operating outside their own data centre. This is probably as lucid a definition as any I’ve heard.
More formalized attempts to describe cloud rapidly turn into essays that attempt to bridge the abstract with the very specific, and in doing seem to miss the cloud for the clouds. Certainly the most effective comprehensive definition has come from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and most of us in the cloud community have fallen back to this most authoritative reference when clarity is important.
Now is our chance to give back to NIST. To define cloud is to accept a task that will likely never end, and the standards boffins have been working hard to continually refine their work. They’ve asked for public comment, and I would encourage everyone to review their latest draft of the Cloud Computing Synopsis and Recommendations. This new publication builds on the basic definitions offered by NIST in the past, and at around 84 pages, it dives deep into the opportunities and issues surrounding SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS. There is good material here, and with community input it can become even better.
You have until June 13, 2011 to respond.
K. Scott Morrison is the Chief Technology Officer and Chief Architect at Layer 7 Technologies, where he is leading a team developing the next generation of security infrastructure for cloud computing and SOA. An architect and developer of highly scalable, enterprise systems for over 20 years, Scott has extensive experience across industry sectors as diverse as health, travel and transportation, and financial services. He has been a Director of Architecture and Technology at Infowave Software, a leading maker of wireless security and acceleration software for mobile devices, and was a senior architect at IBM. Before shifting to the private sector, Scott was with the world-renowned medical research program of the University of British Columbia, studying neurodegenerative disorders using medical imaging technology.
Scott is a dynamic, entertaining and highly sought-after speaker. His quotes appear regularly in the media, from the New York Times, to the Huffington Post and the Register. Scott has published over 50 book chapters, magazine articles, and papers in medical, physics, and engineering journals. His work has been acknowledged in the New England Journal of Medicine, and he has published in journals as diverse as the IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, the Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow, and Neurology. He is the co-author of the graduate text Cloud Computing, Principles, Systems and Applications published by Springer, and is on the editorial board of Springer’s new Journal of Cloud Computing Advances, Systems and Applications (JoCCASA). He co-authored both Java Web Services Unleashed and Professional JMS. Scott is an editor of the WS-I Basic Security Profile (BSP), and is co-author of the original WS-Federation specification. He is a recent co-author of the Cloud Security Alliance’s Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing, and an author of that organization’s Top Threats to Cloud Computing research. Scott was recently a featured speaker for the Privacy Commission of Canada’s public consultation into the privacy implications of cloud computing. He has even lent his expertise to the film and television industry, consulting on a number of features including the X-Files. Scott’s current interests are in cloud computing, Web services security, enterprise architecture and secure mobile computing—and of course, his wife and two great kids.
Layer 7 Technologies: http://www.layer7tech.com
Scott's linkedIn profile.
Twitter: @KScottMorrison
Syscon blog: http://scottmorrison.sys-con.com
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