# The Intercloud



## Harpo (Jul 26, 2014)

5 Reasons you should be Talking About The Intercloud - Cloudyn

The “Intercloud” is considered by many experts, such as Joe Weinman of Forbes,  as the future of cloud computing. Before understanding the challenges  of establishing it, and its benefits, let’s try and define this  Intercloud.
*The Intercloud: The Internet on Steroids*
The cloud market developed rather quickly, with each vendor offering  cloud solutions that are different than their competitors. As of now,  each cloud is an island unto itself—clouds from one provider are unaware  of clouds offered by another provider, and are currently much less able  to communicate or work with other clouds.
 Vint Cerf, the father of the Internet, said  in 2010 that where the cloud is today, the internet was in 1973. One of  the major challenges of the Internet in its nascent years was to teach  all the networks to talk to each other. Each network had no idea of the  existence of another network, nor the ability to communicate with it. It  took ten years to design and implement the modern Internet which  enables networks to work together and exchange information.
 The IEEE the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, is  working on the standardizing of APIs and protocols. This standardization  should enable communication and interaction among all the different  clouds, so they could interact and share assets with each other. Sounds  like a far-away dream, doesn’t it?

*Intercloud-What Can It Do For Me?*
In today’s reality, we have many public providers such as Amazon, IBM,  Google and Microsoft, who all offer unique clouds with advantages as  well as drawbacks. Once you choose a provider you are “locked-in” or  heavily committed to that provider. This “lock-in” is also a main reason  for IT manager for not migrating to the cloud and keep their own  on-premise data centers.
 An Intercloud solution would open up the cloud options so that the  consumer can utilize many clouds at once, similar to the Internet. Here  are some of the advantages that will make this vendor lock-in a thing of  the past:


*Protection: *Utilizing multiple providers could protect against catastrophes that could impact a specific provider’s physical facility.
*Robust Informative Marketplace: *In today’s market where there  are many pricing options and performance variables, it is extremely  difficult to choose a provider that would fit your needs.  With the  cooperation and standardization of all providers, the cloud industry  could function similar to the airline industry. A customer could visit a  virtual marketplace and enter price preference and required  specifications for virtual instances and receive recommendations that  fit their needs.
*Refunds*: Universal standardization and interoperability  between clouds will enable customers to sell back spare capacity to the  grid.    Relating back to the air industry, this could be likened to  returning a ticket to the airlines, or maybe even transferring your  ticket to someone else.
*Expands Global Reach of Cloud Providers*: Despite the fact  that many cloud providers have datacenters all over the globe, there  might be a customer who needs a datacenter in a location that is not  offered by one provider, but is offered by another provider. One  provider would be able to service this customer with the datacenter of  another provider.
*Portability: *Migration could become as simple as “dragging  and dropping” from one provider to the next. This would save money, time  and significant human resources.
 
*The Challenges That Need To Be Solved*
Despite the potential advantages of the Intercloud, there are many  issues that need to be solved before it becomes a reality. Here are some  of the challenges that should be addressed.


*Identification:* The first step is to create a system where  each cloud can be identified and accessed by another cloud, in a  similarity with how an IP address is used by the Internet.
*Acceptance of Standards*: The IEEE is working on standards for  the cloud, the question remains if these standards will be accepted by  all. These standards cannot be enforced, so each cloud provider needs to  accept these standards in order for the needle to move.  Furthermore,  as these standards are being developed, technology is advancing which  might make the new standards obsolete.
*Communication: *Clouds will need to talk to each other to  verify each other’s available resources.  This requires creating a  universal language among the clouds.
*Architecture: *The ability for clouds to corroborate and share  assets is not sufficient, this process needs to be cost-effective and  simple.  Clouds would need to be re-architected in order to create a  user friendly Intercloud that is significantly cheaper than the current  system.
*Payment: *When one provider uses the assets of another  provider, a questions arises on how will the second provider be  compensated, and who will be responsible for the SLAs?
 
*Conclusion*
Despite the significant hurdles that need to be dealt with, it looks like the Intercloud will soon become a reality.  How soon? Well, definitely not it 37 years as opposed to the internet  back in 1973. With the Intercloud, cloud adaptation will accelerate even  quicker as portability becomes easier. The sharing of resources and  assets among providers will benefit both the providers and the  consumers, bringing about new opportunities, greater efficiency and  savings.


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## Ray McCarthy (Jul 26, 2014)

All nonsense
The "Cloud" is just the old Mainframe + Client model selling TimeShare using modern hardware and a broadband connection instead of leased line to connect.

Marketing hype. It's service rental and relying on an opaque service provider for security, backup and privacy. Can you trust the Cloud Sellers.

It's the same stuff as Hosting and rented server applications we had via Internet before they stuck "Cloud" in the name.

The so called "intercloud" has existed for over 15 years and is just the next level of hype. 

Lose the Broadband connection and it's gone. Forget about Mobile or even DSL (except for personal use). A Business needs redundant fibre (i.e. two physical routes) to run using the Cloud or Intercloud.

There has been incremental increases in flexibility of Hosting and Services that can be rented, best known in recent years with Amazon then Google services, now joined by Azure. But anyone that is a major "hosting" supplier is now on the "Cloud" bandwagon touting virtualisatation, SaaS, distributed servers and data on the fly etc. Everything also called "Intercloud".


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## J Riff (Jul 26, 2014)

This stuff is released slowwwwly, to maximize profit over a span of years, demographically studied to maximize profit. 
 Computers are not so much fun anymore.


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