NIST Moves Forward on Cloud Computing

Last week the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) held their second Cloud Computing Forum and Workshop. Skillfully shepherded by Ms. Dawn Leaf, the agency’s senior executive of cloud computing, the event reinforced the US Federeal government’s move towards the cloud. Of particular note to me was the cloud computing simulation model project, known as Koala, that focuses on the behavior of infrastructure-as-a-service cloud systems. Other highlights included:

• A cloud computing standards panel moderated by Mike Hogan and Teresa Schwarzhoff
• Ms Cita M. Furlani, Director NIST Information Technology Laboratory, view of the cloud
• Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Khawaja S. Shams description of a cloud oriented architecture
• Dawn Leaf’s overview of the NIST Cloud Computing Program
• Danielle Kriz of the Information Technology Industry Council presentation on global cloud computing security; and
• Jean-Francois Junger of the European Commision talk on Europe’s digital agenda.

NIST also highlighted their work on cloud computing use cases. This set of twenty five use cases is being used to address portability, interoperability and security concerns within the cloud computing community.

I applaud NIST and the Federal CIO Council for their leadership in this area.

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