Cloud Computing Will Reshape Future Computing IEEE Promote Standards Progress

The IEEE recently announced that it will launch two projects to promote the development of cloud computing. One is a design guide, and the other is an interoperable cloud service standard. These efforts mark the first time that the IEEE standardization organization has begun to pay attention to issues related to cloud services.

Since 2009, the global academic community has begun to call for the standardization of cloud computing and believes that cloud computing may reshape future computing. In addition, many well-known large companies around the world are also launching important cloud computing plans one after another. Various types of cloud services are being adopted by end users including governments of various countries.

In order to promote the progress of cloud standardization, the IEEE is preparing to establish two working groups, namely P2301 and P2302. The P2301 Working Group will adopt a variety of file formats and interface standards to study the standardization of cloud migration and cloud management. The goal is to introduce a guideline document that provides a single piece of work for various industry organizations that have completed or are in progress, such as cloud applications, cloud migrations, cloud management, cloud interfaces, file formats, and operating practices. Reference source.

This guide is available to both cloud service providers and users of procurement cloud services or systems. David Bernstein, who chaired the IEEE P2301 working group, stated that "it is very difficult for companies to formulate any technical specifications concerning cloud services." Bernstein is currently the chief technology officer of Huawei's Silicon Valley software R&D group.

In the past two years, Bernstein has participated in at least six papers on cloud computing, one of which is "Design Blueprint for Intercloud". The interoperability of various types of cloud services—that is, the concept of an interconnected cloud—is exactly what the other standard working group P2302 of the IEEE is. Bernstein will also preside over the work of this working group.

The P2302 working group will try to define a set of criteria to ensure interoperability between cloud services. These standards will cover such areas as namespaces, trusted infrastructures, communication protocols (such as HTTP, SIP, or XMPP), resource directories, and switching topologies.

Bernstein said that the final work result of the working group may be a set of interoperability specifications of cloud services, mainly the standardization of the naming and routing protocols of the Internet and telephony signaling systems7. Although the initial work may only be aimed at high-level software architectures, in the long run, it may also affect the system and chip hardware design.

He said, "The concept of a global interconnect cloud will have a wide and far-reaching impact on the creation of the system, and some of these features may also enter the hardware design, but it is still too early to say this."

Indeed, the IEEE's two working groups have not yet taken shape. "We have contacted more than 200 professionals around the world. We talked about these interesting topics in various IEEE work conferences and emails," Bernstein said.

These professionals come from servers, communications and storage system vendors, as well as software companies and carriers. Bernstein said that he hopes that the IEEE's efforts in the standardization of cloud computing "can have a definite delivery timeline and that it can be delivered this year. I am convinced that next year's work will be even more arduous."