The standardisation of cloud computing: Trends in the state-of-the-art and management issues for the next generation of cloud

Roll-out of future cloud systems will be influenced by regulations from the standardisation bodies, if made available across the community. Trends in cloud deployment, operation and management to date have not been guided by any regulatory standards, and resources have been deployed in an ad hoc manner as demanded according to the business objectives of service providers. This is the least costly and most quickly revenue-returning business model. It is not however, the most cost-effective approach on a long-term basis: As a consequence of this roll-out model to date, the interoperability of resources deployed across clouds managed by different operators is restricted through inability to allocate workload to them in a regulated and controllable manner. The absence of standardised approaches to cloud management is therefore beginning to be accommodated such that the cost and performance advantages of interoperable operation may be exploited. In this paper, we review the state-of-the-art in standards across the field and trends in their development. We present a model which defines the drivers for cloud interoperability and constraints which restrict the extent to which this may realistically occur in future scalable solutions. This is supplemented with discussion on future challenges foreseen with regard to cloud operation and the way in which standards require provision such that cloud interoperation may be accommodated.