Cloud Computing Journal – Architecting Beyond Cloud Computing’s Horseless Carriage

Consider how Cloud Computing’s unique characteristics will change how you do architecture

Today is a wonderful time for anyone interested in Cloud Computing to be working with the US government. On the one hand, the government considers Cloud to be strategically important, and they already have a track record as an early adopter of Cloud Computing on a grand scale. On the other hand, the government is also in the unique position of being able to drive standards for the approach—and in fact, they are even responsible for establishing the most widely adopted definition of Cloud Computing.

The federal agency who has taken this leadership position is the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency of the US Department of Commerce. NIST’s formal definition of Cloud Computing is already well known—“a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.” Concise as that definition is, it only marks the beginning of the work NIST is doing to formalize and standardize the full breadth of Cloud Computing approaches, both within the government as well as for the world at large.

More of the Cloud Computing Journal article from Jason Bloomberg

Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.