Baseline Requirements and Architecture for Cloud Computing Services

Government initiatives such as the “Cloud First” policy are bringing the cloud computing services into Federal Agencies. Further, many of the sectors in the Critical Infrastructure of the nation already use cloud computing. Although cloud computing services are slowly coming to age, many issues remain. This paper therefore takes a closer look at the cloud computing services. First it establishes a baseline by specifying high level requirements for cloud computing services. Next it improves upon the current architecture for the cloud computing services by adding new modules to the current architecture. The new modules are gleaned from an analysis of the telecommunications cloud and security in distributed systems. The new modules include a management and control network, a set of trust domains, and a set of proxies. The improved architecture is more ready for primetime use and supports a richer operational model.