Cloud computing is not for everyone, say draft National Institute of Standards and Technology guidelines.

The draft, published online May 12, outlines various cloud computing models and discusses strengths and weaknesses. Cloud computing in general favors applications that can be broken up into independent parts due to the networked aspect of cloud computing, the draft notes.

That can be problematic for many agencies looking to transfer some applications to a cloud environment, especially those applications programmed "in the large," a reference to applications that that function through many modules programmed by many people or teams over an extended period of time.

Such applications will likely "need to be reengineered to realize the full benefits of the new computing capacity that is now available on demand," the draft paper says.

Other issues associated with a cloud environment include network latency, which can vary due to network issues often not under the control of a cloud computing provider, as well as how portable workloads are from one infrastructure to another.  

In addition, cloud computing also faces the well-known problems of lack of interoperability among cloud providers, compliance with regulatory requirements such as the Federal Information Security Management Act, information security, and inadvertent data leakage when a hypervisor for a logically partitioned machine breaks down.

For more:
- download the draft guidelines, NIST SP 800-146 (.pdf)

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