Intercloud Architecture Framework for Heterogeneous Cloud based Infrastructure Services Provisioning On-Demand

This paper presents on-going research to develop the Intercloud Architecture Framework (ICAF) that addresses problems in multi-provider multi-domain heterogeneous cloud based infrastructure services and applications integration and interoperability, to allow their on-demand provisioning. The paper refers to existing standards and ongoing standardisation activity in Cloud Computing, in particular, recently published NIST Cloud Computing Reference Architecture (CCRA) and ITU-T JCA-Cloud activity. The proposed ICAF defines four complementary components addressing Intercloud integration and interoperability: multi-layer Cloud Services Model that combines commonly adopted cloud service models, such as IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, in one multilayer model with corresponding inter-layer interfaces; Intercloud Control and Management Plane that supports cloud based applications interaction; Intercloud Federation Framework, and Intercloud Operations Framework. The paper briefly describes the Service delivery and lifecycle management as an important ICAF component that provides a basis for consistent management and security of the provisioned on-demand complex cloud based services. The paper describes an implementation of the Intercloud Control and Management Plane in the GEYSERS project to allow optimal provisioning of the combined Network+IT resources in the inter-cloud environment. The proposed architecture is intended to provide an architectural model for developing Intercloud middleware and in this way will facilitate clouds interoperability and integration.