ACM TechNews

Cloud Computing's Perfect Storm?

Technology Review (08/07/08) Borland, John

Intel, Yahoo, Hewlett-Packard, and a group of three international research institutions recently announced they will be participating in a collaborative cloud-computing research initiative aimed at developing an Internet-based computer infrastructure stable enough to host a company's most critical data-processing tasks. The project could also lead to advancements in fields such as climate-change modeling and molecular biology. The six linked data centers, each one operated by a project sponsor, will be one of the largest experiments ever focusing on cloud computing. The large scale of the project will allow researchers to test and develop security, networking, and infrastructure components on a broad basis simulating an open Internet environment. To test this infrastructure, academic researchers will run real-world, data-intensive projects that could lead to new discoveries in data mining, context-sensitive Web searches, and communication in virtual-reality environments. Despite its promise, experts say the cloud-computing model remains technologically underdeveloped. The most progressive thinkers predict that companies will ultimately use remotely hosted cloud services to perform their most complex computing activities. Each of the companies involved in the new initiative has a specific set of research projects planned, with most broadly focusing on operational issues such as security, load balancing, managing parallel processes on a large scale, and how to configure and secure virtual machines across different locations.

http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/21180/?a=f

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