Intercloud Directory and Exchange Protocol Detail Using XMPP and RDF

Working groups have proposed building a layered set of protocols to solve the Cloud Computing interoperability challenge called “Intercloud Protocols”. Instead of each cloud provider establishing connectivity with another cloud provider in a Point-to-Point manner resulting in the n² complexity problem, Intercloud Directories and Exchanges will act as mediators for enabling connectivity and collaboration among disparate cloud providers. Point to Point protocols such as HTTP are not suitable beyond 1-to-1 models, therefore the discussions around many-to-many mechanisms have been proposed, including XMPP. This paper details the use of an XMPP mechanism for such mediation. On top of that, for the federation of the resources themselves, we define a resources catalog approach, using the Semantic Web Resource Definition Framework (RDF) along with a common Ontology of Cloud Computing Resources to work across a variety of heterogeneous cloud providers.