Interconnecting the computing services of different tiers by multiple cloud providers is indispensable to overcome the exponentially increasing demands of enterprises. In view of highly dynamic and unpredictable environment, cloud providers have to face numerous challenges related to service provisioning of diversified applications while handling the critical management operations on resource layers. Proper configuration and uniform development of architectural components and protocols to setup interconnected clouds are inevitable, which play effective role in management. Various approaches have been proposed by research community to interconnect the geographically dispersed clouds to extend the capabilities of standalone provider. Fundamentally, this study encompasses the requirement factors and classification of interconnected cloud management from various aspects. Mainstream resource management elements, architectural components, and brokering protocols with respect to functional impact, which proposed in literature, have been discussed. These protocols and components play pivotal role for aggregating computing services from distinct providers and maintaining the quality of service parameters of service provisioning. Finally, the analysis of various projects is also presented to highlight the functionality of collaborated ecosystem with issues and further directions. K E Y W O R D S brokering, configuration, federation, interconnected clouds, standard interfaces 1 OVERVIEW OF INTERCONNECTED CLOUD Interconnected cloud (Intercloud) is an analogy to internet as latter developed by interlinking the multiple standalone networks, so on the same paradigm evolution of interconnected cloud is intrinsic. Intercloud with the aim to provide large-scale infrastructure that facilitates just-in-time, opportunistic, and scalable provisioning of application services, consistently achieving QoS target under varying workload, resources, and network conditions. In order to harness the geographically dispersed infrastructure of cloud computing in form of aggregated capabilities, interconnecting the standalone clouds through state-of-the-art components and protocols is inevitable with management point of view. 1 Since effective management of the interconnected clouds has great impact on optimal dynamic workload handling and utilization of resources from clients and providers perspective, respectively. Collaboration among multiple providers compose the ecosystem. Therefore, management in respect of resource discovery, monitoring, scheduling in decentralized environment requires the robust policies and automated architectural components to handle critical operations and spikes in demands. 2 Connecting the multiple clouds using diversified architectural components and protocols is vibrant paradigm that curb the issues of singleton cloud when spikes in demand ensuring resources availability and optimized performance. Interconnected cloud in federation 3,4 form also presents the new business model where service providers lease the under...