56
providers, service portals run by authorities for citizens and local business,
etc. are also examples of this.
Government Clouds
The same rules apply to public authorities as to private users and companies
in all branches of industry. Although the public sector is often governed by a
special legal framework, and data protection requirements go beyond the
typical measures, the versatility of potential applications here are virtual
unlimited. Government Clouds can dramatically increase the efficiency of
public datacentres; authority workflows and administrative procedures can
be handled more efficiently and at a lower cost in a closed government
Cloud; networking between various authorities facilitates the flow of data
and the work processes. Cloud services can thus make a considerable
contribution to reducing national spending. And this is a very welcome
option in our current times of tight budgets for many governments across
the world.
Community Clouds (industry‐specific Clouds)
The breadth of Cloud services on offer today is extensive, but each service is
often isolated. If you rent Cloud services from different providers as a
consumer, you face the challenge of needing to log in individually whenever
you use an individual service. There can be no exchange of data between
the individual Cloud services in this case. Community Cloud services offer
single‐sign on and support an individual exchange of data between the
choice of Cloud services, for example, between a CRM (Customer
Relationship Management) and ERP (Enterprise Reasource Planning) for
each customer. Additionally, community Cloud services often cover the
broad IT service requirements of individual groups of users such as tax
consultants, builders, or steel traders.
3.1.6
Which services does each Cloud Model offer?
If you consider the most popular definitions of Cloud computing, you can
categorise Cloud computing in three principle operational models (Chapter
3.1.4.)
and three principle service levels. These service layers build on one
another in a hierarchical structure, which explains why the term "service
platform" has established itself for the individual layers. We briefly saw how
these service platforms are a benefit to Public Cloud, and now will go into
more detail.
