What is "intercloud"

Intercloud \In`ter*cloud"\, v. t. To cloud. [R.]
--Daniel.

1. (context astronomy English) Describing a region between clouds of stars. v

2. (context transitive English) To shut within clouds.

The Intercloud is an interconnected global "cloud of clouds" and an extension of the Internet "network of networks" on which it is based. The term was first used in the context of cloud computing in 2007 when Kevin Kelly opined that "eventually we'll have the intercloud, the cloud of clouds". It became popular in late 2008 and has also been used to describe the datacenter of the future.

The Intercloud scenario is based on the key concept that each single cloud does not have infinite physical resources or ubiquitous geographic footprint. If a cloud saturates the computational and storage resources of its infrastructure, or is requested to use resources in a geography where it has no footprint, it would still be able satisfy such requests for service allocations sent from its clients. The Intercloud scenario would address such situations where each cloud would use the computational, storage, or any kind of resource (through semantic resource descriptions, and open federation) of the infrastructures of other clouds. This is analogous to the way the Internet works, in that a service provider to which an endpoint is attached, will access or deliver traffic from/to source/destination addresses outside of its service area by using Internet routing protocols with other service providers with whom it has a pre-arranged exchange or peering relationship. It is also analogous to the way mobile operators implement roaming and inter-carrier interoperability. Such forms of cloud exchange, peering, or roaming may introduce new business opportunities among cloud providers if they manage to go beyond the theoretical framework.