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TCD Pilot Final Consultation - Unleashing the NREN clouds

The final consultation phase aims at collecting the experiences and recommendations of the Trusted Cloud Drive (TCD) pilot. The consultation phase is open to everyone, if you want to participate, please contact Peter Szegedi <szegedi@terena.org>

The bottom line of the consultation process is the preliminary TCD service architecture depicted below. You might also want to read the paper submitted to the SUCRE CloudSource Magazine for more background information.

The strategic direction to be taken by TERENA is gradually shaping as follows:

• TCD should focus on its main asset; maintaining trust and privacy of the client domain by separating metadata and encryption keys (to be kept in a trusted place) from the storage data (to be exported to back-end storage) at the domains' boundary.
• TCD should not compete with the feature-rich front-end sync&share applications available on the market (such as PowerFolder or OwnCloud platforms) instead, broker them to various public and/or NREN-provided storage back-ends in a trusted way.
• TCD should be a lightweight, thin layer (preferably controlled and operated by NRENs) separating/interfacing end-user application domains and cloud service provider domains; considered to be a "storage middleware".
• TCD should ensure the interoperability with some selected private storage service platforms (throughout strategic partnership) at the front-end as well as aggregating demands and relaying storage data to public cloud storage offerings (procured by TERENA under framework agreements) at the back-end.

In line with the strategic direction outlined above, TERENA will further explore:

A) the service brokering scenarios made available by the TCD-Pithos+ and the TCD-Swift integrations; different NREN storage infrastructures and/or public cloud storage back-ends can be brokered down to user domains in a trusted, privacy-controlled way.

B) the service integration scenarios with feature-rich end-user storage applications; both community-developed and commercial solutions (such as OwnCloud and PowerFolder) will be investigated for potential integration with TCD functionality to preserve trust and privacy.

Consultation notes (restricted for the moment)