TClouds

Cloud Services promise the needs-based distribution of IT services through standardized interfaces on the web. Payment is done by a pay-per-use model and the resources scale to the needs of the users. Fixed investments for an in-house IT are replaced by variable costs, a rigid in-house IT infrastructure gives way to a flexible and dynamic service.

Even if these characteristics fit perfectly into today's fast moving and flexible business processes, there are a number of problems that hinder wide adoption of cloud computing in the business environment. As a new technology cloud computing also has new security risks.

In particular, initially the users have to gain trust in an equally secure and legally compliant processing of sensitive user data by the cloud vendors. According to the study “Security and the Cloud” by the market research company Forrester Research, the market for cloud security solutions will grow to 1.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2015.

The project “Trustworthy Clouds (TClouds) - Privacy and Resilience for Internet-scale Critical Infrastructure” is funded by the European Commission and is targeting the development of a secure, highly reliable and privacy-compliant cloud infrastructure. Primarily TClouds considers a infrastructure-based Cloud to build the services upon, such as Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). The consortium, consisting of 14 partners, including universities, companies, government agencies and users, is distributed over seven countries. All partners are long-time experts in their field of activity and work together on a broad spectrum of tasks and challenges of cloud computing.

• Development of trusted Clouds, which cooperate in a federated architecture. This includes the design of new basic technology, as well as the integration of already commercially available cloud offerings.
• Description of the legal and socio-economic requirements of cross-border Clouds and the evaluation of the technical project results. 
• Demonstration and validation of the technical project developments at two prototypes in the health sector and the energy sector. 
• Supporting standardization efforts through cooperation with other cloud initiatives

In TClouds the Sirrix AG is significantly involved in the development and implementation of basic IT security technologies based on its high-assurance security kernel Turaya and takes a leading role in the IT security work package.

More information about the TClouds-Project you will find here.