Intercloud: Solving Interoperability and Communication in a Cloud of Clouds

Introduction

“Cloud computing” is a term applied to various computational and IT services provided on a “utility” basis, typically hosted in large geographically distributed data centers. The services provisioned within these data centers are highly automated and take seconds to deliver upon a subscriber’s request. Additionally, these data centers typically leverage virtualization technologies, such as hypervisor-based virtual machines, as an abstraction technique to deliver cloud services. Within cloud computing there are service layers such as infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS) that can be used in a private, public, or hybrid deployment model.

Because of hardware commoditization ...