Introduction:

The fourth ITU-T Focus Group on Cloud Computing (FG Cloud) meeting took place in Nanjing, China, from 10 to 13 January, 2011 with 50 contributions presented by representatives of  ITU-T member companies.   Access to FG Cloud documentation is restricted to TIES users, or GUEST users (http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/edh/faqs-guest.html) having registered to FG cloud mailing list.  Excellent progress was made resulting in 6 technical output documents and an ITU-T TSAG report covering the activities of the two Working Groups of the FG Cloud:

WG1: Cloud computing benefits & requirements

WA 1-1 Cloud Definition, Ecosystem & Taxonomy
WA 1-2 Uses cases Requirements & Architecture
WA 1-3 Cloud security
WA 1-4 Infrastructure & Network enabled Cloud
WA 1-5 Cloud Services & Resource Management, Platforms and Middleware
WA 1-6 Cloud computing benefits & first Requirements from ICT perspectives

WG2: Gap Analysis and Roadmap on Cloud Computing Standards development in ITU-T

WA 2-1 Overview of cloud computing SDOs activities
WA 2-2 Gap analysis & Action plan for development of relevant ITU-T Cloud Standard

Backgrounder:

The Focus Group on Cloud Computing (FG Cloud) was established further to ITU-T TSAG agreement at its meeting in Geneva, 8-11 February 2010 followed by ITU-T study groups and membership consultation.  The Focus Group will, from the standardization view points and within the competences of ITU-T, contribute with the telecommunication aspects, i.e., the transport via telecommunications networks, security aspects of telecommunications, service requirements, etc., in order to support services/applications of “cloud computing” making use of telecommunication networks; specifically:

-Identify potential impacts on standards development and priorities for standards needed to promote and facilitate telecommunication/ICT support for cloud computing
-Investigate the need for future study items for fixed and mobile networks in the scope of ITU-T-analyze which components would benefit most from interoperability and standardization
-Familiarize ITU-T and standardization communities with emerging attributes and challenges of telecommunication/ICT support for cloud computing
-Analyze the rate of change for cloud computing attributes, functions and features for the purpose of assessing the appropriate timing of standardization of telecommunication/ICT in support of cloud computing

The Focus Group Cloud will collaborate with worldwide cloud computing communities (e.g., research institutes, forums, and academia) including other SDOs and consortia.  The chairman, Mr. Victor Kutukov (Russia) and the five Vice-chairmen, Jamil Chawki (France Telecom Orange, France), Kangchan Lee (ETRI, Korea), Mingdong Li (ZTE, China), Monique Morrow (Cisco Systems, USA), Koji Nakao (KDDI, Japan) were appointed as the FG Cloud leadership.

Nanjing Meeting Results:

The outputs of this meeting are described in the following documents (again, only accessible to TIES users with user id/password):

1.  Introduction to the cloud ecosystem: definitions, taxonomies, use cases, high level requirements and capabilities.

2.  Functional requirements and reference architecture

3.  nfrastructure and network enabled cloud

4.  Cloud security, threat & requirements

5. Benefits of cloud computing from telecom/ICT perspectives

6. Overview of SDOs involved in cloud computing

As a result of contributions and discussions, the following topics were extracted as a first proposal for cloud candidate study items for ITU-T:

1) Cloud Ecosystem: telecommunication-centric use cases, high level  requirements, business deployment scenarios
2) Security, audit &  cloud privacy
3) Cloud functional Architecture
4) Cloud Networking : Elastic Transport network resources and connectivity
5) Inter-Cloud including cloud federation and brokering
6) Accessibility and Eco-friendly Cloud Computing (environmental benefits)
7) Management and SLAs

In addition to these study items the ITU-T FG Cloud will deliver a general output document for Cloud Definition, Terminology, Ecosystem, use cases and general requirements.

For further information, please visit:  http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/focusgroups/cloud/Pages/default.aspx