Cloud computing and Cultural Heritage IT

Stephen Stead (Southampton University and Paveprime Ltd)

Cloud computing has become the common term used by many manufacturers to describe their products and services. Everything is now "Cloud" or "Cloud ready" but what exactly does this mean and what are the implications to cultural heritage computing? Many organisations are looking to Cloud computing to reduce their Information Technology costs. Is this a realistic goal? Certainly the Sunday colour supplements are trumpeting this as the great benefit. This paper defines the key cloud computing concepts and examines the implications of cloud computing to the heritage sector. In particular, it outlines the organizational and policy changes that heritage
organisations must consider.

We will cover the five Cloud tenents (Broad Network Access, Resource Pooling, Rapid Elasticity, Metered Service and On Demand Self Service), the 3 service models (Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS)), the four deployment models (Private Cloud, Public Cloud, Hybrid Cloud and Community Cloud), Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) and the generic Information Technology as a Service (ItaaS) concept. It will look at the generic management structures, policies and charge back and/or show back mechanisms that need to be implemented within organisations hoping to work with Cloud computing.