Some networking aspects of software-defined cloud platforms

The term “cloud computing” has firmly entered the area of information technologies. The requirements to modern cloud platforms in a flexible application-centric infrastructure are most effectively implemented with software-defined cloud platforms. The most important infrastructure component of the software-defined cloud is the network which not only consolidates all infrastructure components of the platform but also provides the client access to cloud services. In the software-defined cloud, a software-defined network looks most naturally being able to provide the cloud infrastructure with the necessary flexibility and manageability. The article examines some issues of the software-defined cloud platforms paying special attention to a number of network aspects from the existing terminological uncertainty regarding the data center infrastructures to some management features of the software-defined cloud networks and the role of the networking in an application-centric infrastructure.