Regional cloud providers that operate data centers and associated wide-area networking across their region are well positioned to cooperatively build a global cloud infrastructure with other regional cloud providers, and thus, become a valuable party for Content and Application Providers (CPs and APs). We call the formalization of such cooperation a federated cloud. In a federated cloud, application and/or content requests placed to a cloud provider can be served locally -- e.g., by a supporting cloud provider, even when this supporting cloud provider only has an indirect relationship to the AP or CP by way of a primary cloud provider. In this case, a primary cloud provider is defined as the cloud provider with which an AP or CP has a direct contractual arrangement for cloud services. A federated cloud member simultaneously acts as a primary cloud provider and a supporting cloud provider as defined by their relationship with different APs and CPs.
 
In a federated cloud, part or all of each individual provider's compute, storage, and networking resources become part of a federated pool of cloud resources. Management systems of these individual (regional) cloud providers are linked to facilitate end-to-end cloud services capability. By definition, a federated cloud includes a clearing house to settle expenditures and revenues of the end-to-end cloud services based on agreed methods, interfaces, and procedures for settlement.