Will the community cloud be the next hot spot?

Community clouds can be viewed as part of a public cloud, dedicated to specific vertical industries, such as government, healthcare, or finance, to provide a range of services, including infrastructure as a service (PAAs), software as a service (SaaS), or platform as a service (PAAs). The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines the community cloud as "a set of infrastructures shared by several organizations that support specific communities concerned with the same issues." ”

For example, a community cloud for the healthcare industry may be dedicated to meeting specific security and regulatory requirements to comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The bill introduced stringent standards to protect health-related data. Or, the community cloud for the financial services industry is optimized to provide a low latency service for stock traders to engage in financial transactions.

"In the end, if there is a cloud that is more business-oriented, the cloud is attractive compared to a common cloud that is not customized for the customer's industry," Lodge said. ”

From a provider's point of view, community cloud allows service providers to differentiate themselves in the increasingly crowded cloud market, said Andi Mann, vice president of enterprise and cloud solutions at Crown Technologies.

For example, many providers offer a range of infrastructure services (IaaS) products that attract a large customer base, including Amazon network Services, Rackspace, Terremark, and Savvis. However, the services offered by a provider to a particular market can make the provider stand out and allow it to provide complementary services to the industry. For example, a health care IaaS cloud provider may also provide healthcare-related software as a service (SaaS), or even PAAs products, which are geared toward the healthcare industry. "This is the difference between providing a server and providing a service," Mann said. ”

Community Cloud is not a new concept. As early as September 2010, a blog post written by Gordon Haff, a red Hat's cloud service advocate, points to the "Community cloud Rising". Haff admits, but since then, the pace of using community clouds has been slow. The market is still immature and there has not been a trial of water by a group of heavyweight community cloud providers. Instead, providers in niche areas have emerged to serve specific industries. ”

Haff recently said to the media: "I would say that we are still in an earlier period." But there is no doubt that people are interested in the community cloud. "The Government, health care and finance industries are some of the areas where Haff claims to be the first to adopt a community cloud." But they also face obstacles. In essence, the community cloud is not necessarily a new technology, but a different way of aggregating users in the service side. "The hard part is not technology, it's about organising the industry," Haff said. "For example, some companies may hesitate to share common resources with rivals."

Mann says the biggest technical difference between the community cloud and the public cloud is the custom features that are tailored to the community's cloud-oriented industry. For example, a community cloud for the healthcare industry may have specific identity access configuration and security features that allow users to meet their data storage requirements while complying with HIPAA.

Haff says providers are beginning to see the competitive advantage of providing a community cloud; The first players to enter the field have been the providers of products and services that already have specific industries. But Haff, Lodge and Mann all agree that community clouds may become more widespread.

Although the community cloud is not yet fully popular, there are some examples on the market. The International Gaming technology company (Analysys Game Marvell), which provides computer gaming technology, recently launched the IGT Cloud, a cloud dedicated to gaming companies. It uses the AppLogic cloud computing platform of the Crown Tech company to provide a cloud-based SaaS service for casinos so that casinos can better manage the gaming industry.

Optum is another example of the technology division of the United Health Group, the largest insurance provider in the United States (UnitedHealth Group). It launched the Optum Tiyatien Cloud (optum Health Cloud) This February, so that customers in the healthcare industry can take full advantage of cloud resources. Ted Hoy, senior vice president and general manager of Optum Cloud Solutions, says that strict compliance with HIPAA data protection standards, coupled with ongoing demands to reduce and improve health care management efficiency, make Community cloud services look natural for the healthcare industry. The community cloud is based on the two data centers owned by Optum, and Hoy hopes it will eventually provide customers with IaaS, SaaS, and PAAs.

Hoy says the service has a unique function that is developed specifically for the healthcare industry. For example, HIPAA regulations regulate how secure certain information must be (depending on the type of information). Emails sent between two doctors about the latest advances in medical trends require different levels of protection from emails between doctors and patients. Optum, in collaboration with Cisco, has developed security rules for a system that identifies who is entering information, what type of information it is, and who is accessing it.

But Hoy that community clouds have great potential. According to a report by the U.S. Department of Health and Welfare, there were 385 data leaks in the past, most of them attributable to the loss or theft of physical material, such as laptops or paper records. "If we move health care data into the cloud and it is no longer stored on the site, it is likely to end most leaks," he said. ”

Other community cloud providers are also committed to the unique features of their products. CFN, for example, has recently launched Global Financial Services Cloud, the world financial Service Cloud, which is dedicated to providing cloud-based IaaS services to financial services companies. Mark Casey, chief executive of CFN, says many financial companies need a low latency link between business operations and data centers-their cloud-based IaaS services are managed in the data center. With a huge network of 70 collaborating data centers across the country, including those in the vicinity of New York's financial centre, the company can make it possible for those financial companies seeking ultra-low latency, cloud-based transaction services to access the services they need. CFN has been working with a number of financial services companies, and he hopes to expand the company's market share by offering new services.

Haff, of the Red Hat company, said he expects to hear more announcements of this sort in the future. The community cloud gives providers the opportunity to differentiate their offerings from competitors, and gives users the opportunity to make the most of the cloud-based resources that are developed specifically for their industry. The biggest problem, he says, is for corporate companies to accept community clouds.