Preserving records in the cloud

The purpose of this paper is to examine the characteristics of managing records in a cloud computing environment and compare these with existing archiving models, exemplified by the open archival information system (OAIS) reference model.

The authors compare the functional entities in OAIS with a layered model of cloud computing, in which services are abstracted and shared between layers.

It is concluded that there are a number of areas where OAIS does not integrate well with cloud computing systems. Based on the findings, a new layered model for a cloud archiving system is defined using the concepts and information types from the OAIS reference model. The proposed model allows the sharing of functionality and information objects by making them available as services to higher layers. The model covers the entire document lifecycle, making archive functionality such as preservation planning possible at an early stage and helping to simplify records transfer.

The model provides a simple, OAIS compatible approach to representing how digital objects and necessary metadata can be transferred from content creation systems to archives systems.

Whereas a lot of research has been done on the technical aspects of cloud storage, there is a lack of focus on how to comprehensively integrate records transfer and preservation in cloud systems. This paper fills in some of the gaps.