An Ontology for Tactical Cloud Computing

This week I've had the pleasure of presenting at two fairly unique conferences.

On Tuesday I was in San Diego at the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO) Workshop. SISO is an international organization dedicated to the promotion of modeling and simulation (M&S) interoperability and reuse for the benefit of a broad range of M&S communities. SISO's Conference Committee organizes Simulation Interoperability Workshops (SIWs) in the US and Europe. SISO's Standards Activity Committee develops and supports simulation interoperability standards, both independently and in conjunction with other organizations. SISO is recognized as a Standards Development Organization (SDO) by NATO and as a Standards Sponsor by IEEE.

On Wednesday I was in Los Angeles at the Ground System Architecture Workshop (GSAW). Hosted by the Aerospace Corporation, GSAW provides a forum for the world's spacecraft ground system experts to collaborate with other ground system users, developers, and researchers through tutorials, presentations, working groups, and panel discussions on issues and solutions.

The common interest was of course cloud computing and both presentations focused on how to establish a common framework for developing cloud computing solutions. In both presentations, I introduced the cloud computing ontology first put forth by University of California and IBM.

In order to better adapt this excellent framework for my audience, I then presented my personal views on how this framework could be modified to address DoD, DHS and Intelligence

community requirements.

Key modifications include:

• The addition of an access management layer
• Explicit SOA related layers to address workflow orchestration, application security and service management
• Explicit connectivity layer in order to avoid a common assumption that the public Internet is always used as the networking layer in cloud computing solutions

This approach seemed to enhance the conversation and interest so I'm now putting this out to the wider community for consideration.

Your comments are welcomed and appreciated.