Terms of Reference for Technical Committee (TC) CLOUD
Approved at Board#74
The goal of TC CLOUD is to address issues associated with
the convergence between IT (Information Technology) and Telecommunications.
The focus is on scenarios where connectivity goes beyond the local network.
This includes not only Cloud computing but also the emerging commercial trend
towards Cloud computing which places particular emphasis on ubiquitous
network access to scalable computing and storage resources.
Since TC CLOUD has particular interest in interoperable solutions in
situations which involve contributions from both the IT and Telecom
industries, the emphasis is on the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
delivery model. TC CLOUD focuses on interoperable applications and services
based on global standards and the validation tools to support these
standards. Evolution towards a coherent and consistent general purpose
infrastructure is envisaged. This will support networked IT applications in
business, public sector, academic and consumer environments.
The approach is to complement existing activities in ETSI and other
standards development organisations. TC CLOUD is expected to fulfil a
specific role as a forum in which to develop consensus within the
telecommunications sector which can then be represented in other bodies. It
can also act to introduce new requirements into networking (e.g. NGN)
standards which support new application paradigms such as Grid and Cloud.
TC CLOUD will address interoperability aspects of
end-to-end applications and develop formal test specifications to support
them.
The technical scope of TC CLOUD is broad. It includes:
- resource and service
access
Stakeholders include:
- standards bodies and related
organisations
-
commercial actors such as software vendors, integrators, equipment
manufacturers, network operators and service providers
- academic and research institutes, collaborative projects
TC CLOUD will not address all the issues identified alone.
Networking with existing standardisation bodies and other relevant
stakeholders will help to build the consensus necessary to produce technical
specifications and reports. This will enable ETSI to propose a roadmap to
interoperable ICT Cloud standards.
TC CLOUD has specific collaboration links with:
- ETSI TC TISPAN, TC MTS and ETSI CTI (Centre for Testing &
Interoperability)
-
Open Grid Forum, with which a Memorandum of Understanding
has been signed
- European Commission DG INFSO, DG ENTR
- NESSI European Technology Platform
Additional collaboration and liaison with other bodies
will be sought as required.