Cloud brokers: Simplifying complexity

January 8, 2013 Off By David
Object Storage

Grazed from FCW. Author: John Moore.

The Obama administration’s cloud-first strategy, data center consolidation directive, and security certification process for cloud products and services all point agencies toward greater cloud adoption. Indeed, the policies and programs that seek to spark cloud acceptance are now largely in place. What’s lacking, however, is a definitive statement on how to coordinate cloud resources. Over time, agencies will likely end up juggling their own private clouds, public clouds provided by companies such as Amazon and multiple software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings.

As a result, the concept of the cloud broker has emerged as a way to deal with increasingly complex cloud environments. A cloud broker, also called a cloud services brokerage, basically creates a buffer between the customer and the cloud solutions. Bob Bohn, cloud program manager at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, said a broker “can take a complex situation for a consumer and make it manageable.”…

Why it matters

Agencies have begun to explore the cloud broker model. Last year, the General Services Administration and the Defense Information Systems Agency issued requests for information to learn more from industry about cloud brokers…

Read more from the source @ http://fcw.com/articles/2013/01/07/cloud-broker.aspx