“Standards and Interoperability” is a task in the GÉANT 3+ SA7 activity titled “Support to clouds.” By starting this activity GÉANT recognizes that a major portion of traffic in the European research and education networks will be generated by clouds in the near future. Formulating a common strategy towards clouds, which could be adopted by most or all participating NRENs, is the main goal of the activity.

Task 2 “Standards and Interoperability” is charged with surveying the cloudscape for applicable standards and best practices to be adhered to when procuring, providing, or brokering cloud services.

The authors are aware that the term Cloud or Cloud Service can refer to many different levels and flavors of a service, which are potentially very different and many classes of standards can be inapplicable, with the possible exception of authentication-related standards, which should apply to all. The authors acknowledge that major parts of this Document have been written with IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) clouds in mind.

This principal output document is intended as a commented map of various relevant standards, best practices, activities and use cases. It is a container collecting contributions from all members of the SA7 Activity, who have in any way obtained experience with any of the listed standards or solutions. High-level recommendations meant primarily for procurers of cloud services are given based on the survey of the cloudscape and the existing resources.

This Document does by no means aim to replace existing general directories of standards, but rather to collect references and add value to standards relevant to the target community, i.e., NRENs or GÉANT as a whole.