NIST Cloud Computing Standards Roadmap Version 2 (Supersedes Version 1.0, July 2011)

The NIST Cloud Computing Standards Roadmap Working Group has surveyed the existing standards landscape for interoperability, performance, portability, security, and accessibility standards/models/studies/use cases/conformity assessment programs, etc., relevant to cloud computing. Where possible, new and emerging standardization work has also been tracked and surveyed. Using this available information, current standards, standards gaps, and standardization priorities are identified within this document.

The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing identified 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. As an extension to the above NIST cloud computing definition, a NIST cloud computing reference architecture has been developed by the NIST Cloud Computing Reference Architecture and Taxonomy Working Group that depicts a generic high-level computing. It contains a set of views and descriptions that are the basis for discussing the characteristics, uses, and standards for cloud computing, and relates to a companion cloud computing taxonomy (http://www.nist.gov/customcf/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=909505). Cloud computing use cases describe the consumer requirements when using cloud computing service offerings. Through its working groups as described below, the NIST Cloud Computing program has studied a range of U.S. federal government and general-purpose use cases to extract features that are amenable to standardization. Using these examples, the current document analyzes how existing cloud-related standards fit the needs of federal cloud consumers and identifies standardization gaps. Cloud computing standards are already available in support of many of the functions and requirements. While many of these standards were developed in support of pre-cloud computing technologies, such as those designed for web services and the Internet, they also support the functions and requirements of cloud computing. Other standards have been developed or are now being developed to support specific cloud computing functions and requirements, such as virtualization, infrastructure management, service level agreements (SLAs), audits and cloud- specific data handling. Wherever possible, applicable standards are identified in this document.

To assess the state of standardization in support of cloud computing, the NIST Cloud Computing Standards Roadmap Working Group has compiled an Inventory of Standards Relevant to Cloud Computing  (http://collaborate.nist.gov/twiki-cloud-computing/bin/view/CloudComputing/StandardsInventory). This inventory is being maintained and updated as necessary. Using the taxonomy developed by the NIST Cloud Computing Reference Architecture and Taxonomy Working Group, cloud computing relevant standards have been mapped to the requirements of accessibility, interoperability, performance, portability, and security.