Service-Oriented Cloud Computing Infrastructure (SOCCI) Framework – Glossary

 

Application Service

An application service, along with Infrastructure Services and Human Services, are the components of Business Services. This service can be decomposed into a number of infrastructure services and application services.

BpaaS

Business Process as a Service.

BPM

Business Performance Management. BPM consists of a set of processes that are used by the Monitoring & Event Manager to monitor the performance of the business. Performance can be measured in various ways, including the company’s financial performance as well as the performance of various business activities.

BSM

Business Service Management.

Business Process

Business processes realize courses of action. Courses of action are undertaken to ensure that the organization makes progress towards one or more of its goals. Business processes include processes that are specific to the data center, such as ITIL processes.

Business Service

A business service is consumed by a business process. This service can be decomposed into a number of infrastructure services, application services, and human services.

Cloud Computing

The definition of cloud computing provided by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the US has gained significant traction within the IT industry. This document leverages the definition of Cloud Computing from NIST as the formal definition. NIST defines cloud computing as follows:

“Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models.”

Community Cloud

The cloud infrastructure is shared by several organizations and supports a specific community that has shared concerns (e.g., mission, security requirements, policy, and compliance considerations). It may be managed by the organizations or a third party and may exist on-premise or off-premise.

Consumer

A consumer is an entity (normally a person, organization, or piece of technology such as a software program) that uses a service. Every service has one or more consumers, and has effects that are of value to its consumers.

End User

An end user is the ultimate consumer of the services provided in the context of a business process.

Human Services

A business process consists of services provided by IT or human activity. A human service is a portion of the business process that is carried out by human activity.

Hybrid Cloud

The cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more clouds (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting for load-balancing between clouds).

IaaS

Infrastructure as a Service. The capability provided to the consumer is to provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems; storage, deployed applications, and possibly limited control of select networking components (e.g., host firewalls).

Infrastructure

The IT infrastructure consists of foundational building blocks on which applications and business processes run. It provides generic infrastructure services that can be used by multiple applications.

Infrastructure Services

The IT infrastructure consists of foundational building blocks on which applications and business processes run. Infrastructure services are components of business services, other infrastructure services, and application services. Moreover, they are composed of infrastructure services, virtualized services, and physical services.

ITSM

IT Service Management.

PaaS

Platform as a Service. The capability provided to the consumer is to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure consumer-created or acquired applications created using programming languages and tools supported by the provider. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, or storage, but has control over the deployed applications and possibly application hosting environment configurations.

Physical Services

Physical services are consumed by virtualized services and infrastructure services. Physical services are provided by the hardware components (e.g., storage, network) of the infrastructure.

Private Cloud

The cloud infrastructure is operated solely for an organization. It may be managed by the organization or a third party and may exist on-premise or off-premise.

Public Cloud

The cloud infrastructure is made available to the general public or a large industry group and is owned by an organization selling cloud services.

SaaS

Software as a Service. The capability provided to the consumer is to use the provider’s applications running on a cloud infrastructure. The applications are accessible from various client devices through a thin client interface such as a web browser (e.g., web-based email). The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, storage, or even individual application capabilities, with the possible exception of limited user-specific application configuration settings.

SLA

Service Level Agreement.

SOCCI

Service-Oriented Cloud Computing Infrastructure. SOCCI can be defined as a service-oriented, utility-based, manageable, scalable on-demand infrastructure that supports essential cloud characteristics, service, and deployment models. In other words, SOCCI describes the essentials for implementing and managing an IaaS environment.

SOI

Service Oriented Infrastructure.

Virtualization Service

A virtualization service is a service that appears to the software to be a physical service but is, in fact, a service provided by the virtualization software.