Cloud blueprints for integrating and managing cloud federations

Contemporary cloud technologies face insurmountable obstacles. They follow a pull-based, producer-centric trajectory to development where cloud consumers have to ‘squeeze and bolt’ applications onto cloud APIs. They also introduce a monolithic SaaS/PaaS/IaaS stack where a one-size-fits-all mentality and vendor lock-in prevail. As a consequence consumers cannot mix and match functionality from diverse tiers of the cloud stack – horizontally or vertically – dynamically configuring it to address their needs. This paper presents an approach that overcomes these obstacles by providing an innovative reference architecture, an enhanced cloud delivery model which breaks down the rigidity of the cloud stack and transforms it into modular and easily combined components, and a complete integration and management environment that offers integration-as-a-service functionality