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authenticated security verifcation for the processes,
structure or establishment of community cloud
services. For businesses, a lack of either availability or
security ultimately translates into loss of profts. Any
business participating in a community cloud scenario
should make sure that all data transmitted (both to
and from) should be double encrypted; meaning,
data remains encrypted when stable and when being
transmitted. And as with any other type of cloud
network, community clouds must also be able to ofer
individual organizations a set of emergency options;
basically, all data must be backed-up in another
location in order to allow them to speedily recover
important fles.
Since many diferent organizations may share in the
development and operation of a community cloud,
they also share in the cost of establishing it. This
essentially provides
two massive benefts
:
• The greater the number of companies involved, the
more capital is available to invest; conversely, the
lower the individual investor’s cost.
• More investment funds directly translate into more
hardware / software / virtualized resources. The
more organizations that are involved, the more
powerful the system becomes.
There are certain inhibitors in a community cloud
however, such as software licensing. You would
assume that since a group of organizations inhabit the
same community cloud that they would be able to
share software licenses, this is not the case. Software
licenses are generally limited to specifc or individual
organizations; a community cloud does not constitute
an organization (though they share resources, they
do not share profts). But this is also true of any other
type of cloud or grid networking / computing, so it
should not be that much of an inhibiting factor.
One of the biggest selling points
of the community
cloud model is that it does not require individual
organizations to provide their own IT departments
/ infrastructures. This is great news for companies
looking to run their operation sans an IT department
(thereby freeing up additional budgetary resources),
but could be potentially bad for those organizations
that are intensively involved in tech-related matters.
It is estimated / predicted that many cloud service
providers will eventually begin marketing individual
community clouds to organizations of similar type
or design. And there’s no disputing that this makes
sense, at least from a logical perspective. If there are
10 healthcare organizations that are looking for cloud
services it only makes sense to bundle them together.
Doing so might even allow cloud managers to set up
specifc “public areas”within the community cloud
that would allow everyone to access medical research
and / or patient fles, thereby more efciently utilizing
their resources.
As with any other development in computer
networking, community clouds are yet another
stepping stone toward a more perfect model for
businesses and organizations to create, share and
communicate both internally and externally. Whether
or not the community cloud model that currently
exists will become the standard model for business /
organizational computer networking remains to be
seen.
The community cloud model is however a signifcant
advancement in terms of networking infrastructure;
if its inherent design scruples can be dealt with in
a comprehensive manner it may ofer businesses
and organizations a completely streamlined way of
running their operations.