Defining Inter-Cloud Architecture for Interoperability and Integration

This paper presents an on-going research to develop the Inter-Cloud Architecture, which addresses the architectural problems in multi-provider multi-domain heterogeneous cloud based applications integration and interoperability, including integration and interoperability with legacy infrastructure services. Cloud technologies are evolving into a common way to virtualize infrastructure services and to offer on-demand service provisioning. In this way, they add physical/hardware platform independency and mobility to the existing distributed computing and networking technologies. The paper uses existing standards in Cloud Computing, in particular the recently published NIST Cloud Computing Reference Architecture (CCRA) as the basis for the Inter-Cloud architecture.