[Here is an excellent presentation by Steve Wallace on an Internet 2 pilot project to broker commercial and private cloud services to universities.
This is very much along the lines of JANET/JISC and SURFnet initiatives. Brokering commercial cloud services, to my mind, is an ideal service offering for R&E networks as they generally manage the federated authentication systems and collaborative tools such as SURFconext, COmanage, COIP, etc to facilitate use of these clouds. A well, Open Lightpath Exchanges will enable large data file transfers to and from major commercial cloud providers.
As I mentioned in a previous blog I believe commercial clouds are much better suited for the needs of the research and education community as they allow virtually unlimited scaling as the needs of the researcher increase. When a university or research community provisions a private cloud they are constrained in their ability to scale by the funding renewal cycle of the granting councils. Private or community clouds may look cheaper but that is because researchers rarely see the true cost of operating a cloud. As well there is an incredible amount of innovation occurring in the commercial space and prices are continually dropping. A brokered commercial cloud service allows R&E networks to get large discounts and provide a blanket license for all institutions in terms of privacy and security etc. R&E networks can also implement policy engines to insure that some compute tasks and data storage is done only domestically – BSA]
https://blogs.internet2.edu/archives/185
Steve Wallace
http://www.internet2.edu/presentations/jt2011summer/20110713-wallace-cloud-update.pdf
Objective:
A technical and business model for the provisioning of multi vendor cloud services
leveraging the Internet2 Network and InCommon Federated Authentication and
encouraging of an interoperable marketplace for services where individual
institutions might procure services from a wide range of cloud services providers.
Inital Outreach
Solicitation in the Fall of 2010 was sent to over 40 vendors (primarily Internet2
corporate members)
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Green Internet Consultant. Practical solutions to reducing GHG emissions such as free broadband and electric highways. http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com
twitter:BillStArnaud
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/
skype:Pocketpro
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Green Internet Consultant. Practical solutions to reducing GHG emissions such as free broadband and electric highways. http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com
twitter: BillStArnaud
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/
skype: Pocketpro