Cloud (Railway)

Cloud computing. Physical computer resources not visible, hidden, remote from where the service is requested and performed.  It means the provision of services provided by a supplier to a customer through the Internet (such as storage, processing, data transmission, application programs). The supplier in its premises has all the software and hardware (server) to perform a service, while the customer has only the terminals on which to operate. The service offered can be defined I&P-AAS (Infrastructure Hw & Platform Sw – As A Service), where the customer can focus only on his “core business”, leaving to the supplier the logistic tasks of which he is a specialist and which represent his “core business”. In this direction it is possible to make economies of scale by the customer who no longer has to buy a computer system, but only use it for what it needs paying only a fee, freeing himself from the tasks and costs of maintenance, renewal and up grading. The supplier in turn has the convenience of having stable customers over time. In critical railway applications, for example with SIL4 characteristics, redundant servers and networks are to be provided, in particular SIL 4 hardware and ad hoc procedures, so as to make the system as a whole SIL4, even if some parts are certainly SIL 0 (e.g. the Internet). This is possible and foreseen by Cenelec Standards for railway signalling systems (EN 50128).