The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will host its eighth annual Cloud Computing Forum and Workshop in Gaithersburg, Maryland, on July 7-10. A collaborative organized effort between the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) / International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Joint Technical Committee (JTC) 1 Subcommittee (SC) 38 on Cloud Computing and Distributed Platforms, the event will focus on cloud standards and will feature an exhibit from the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). The four-day forum and workshop will also feature discussions and panels covering specific areas of research and development in the cloud environment.
Several ANSI members working on cloud standardization will also exhibit at the event, which is scheduled to cover the following topics: The Current state of Cloud Computing Standards; Progress on the NIST SP500 293: 10 High Level Requirements for Cloud Adoption; Cloud Forensics; and Cloud Computing: Customers and Government.
NIST defines cloud computing as a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models.
The U.S. is instrumental in cloud computing standardization efforts, with ANSI serving as secretariats of ISO/IEC JTC 1 and SC 38. Karen Higginbottom director of standards initiatives at Hewlett-Packard serves as JTC 1's chair, and Dr. Donald Deutsch, vice president, standards strategy and architecture for Oracle, serves as chair of SC 38. The ANSI-Accredited U.S. Technical Advisory Group (TAG) to JTC 1 SC 38 is administered by the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS).
In 2014, SC 38 was responsible for developing two new International Standards for cloud computing: ISO/IEC 17788, Cloud Computing- Overview and Vocabulary, and ISO/IEC 177789, Cloud Computing-Reference Architecture, in collaboration with ITU-T - the International Telecommunication Union's Telecommunication Standardization Sector. Over 30 countries participated in the development of the two standards.
The NIST event will be held at the Gaithersburg Hilton, and registration details can be found here. For more details on the session topics, click here to access the session descriptions.
About ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 38
Created in 2009, ISO/IEC JTC 1 SC 38 is directly responsible for six published ISO standards. The committee focuses on standardization in the area of cloud computing and distributed platforms including but not limited to: