Cloud-Computing

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2009 Short List

[edit] Time-to-Adoption: One year or Less

[edit] Time-to-Adoption: Two to Three Years

[edit] Time-to-Adoption: Four to Five Years

[edit] Critical Challenges

[edit] Key Trends

Time-to-Adoption: One Year or Less

The emergence of large “data farms” — specialized data centers that host thousands of servers — has created a surplus of computing resources that has come to be called the cloud. Aspects of computing that used to be considered expensive, like disk storage and computing cycles, are now becoming cheap and ubiquitous. Layered on top of the cloud infrastructure are development platforms that are enabling thin-client, web-based applications for everything from image editing to word processing to music and video manipulation. Specialized applications like Flickr live entirely in the cloud; there is no single computer, or even specific group of computers, that can be pointed to as housing Flickr, Google, or YouTube. To the end user, the cloud is invisible; the technology that supports the applications doesn’t matter — the fact that the applications are always available is key.

There are three types of services associated with the cloud. The most straightforward set of services from an end-user perspective are cloud-based applications that serve a single function, such as Gmail (http://gmail.com) or Quicken Online (http://quicken.intuit.com/online-banking-finances.jsp). The next tier is one step removed from this: instead of offering end-user applications, these services offer the infrastructure on which to build such applications, along with the computing power to deliver them, like Google App Engine (http://code.google.com/appengine/) or Heroku (http://heroku.com). The final tier of cloud services are those that offer sheer computing resources without a development platform layer, like Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/) or the GoGrid (http://www.gogrid.com).

[edit] Relevance for Teaching, Learning & Creative Expression

  • Cloud-based applications can provide students and teachers with free or low-cost alternatives to expensive, proprietary productivity tools.
  • Browser-based applications are accessible for a variety of computer and even mobile platforms, making these tools available anywhere the Internet can be accessed.
  • The shared infrastructure approach imbedded in the cloud computing concept offers considerable potential for large scale experiments and research that can make use of untapped processing power.

[edit] Examples

  • CloudTrip is a fledgling directory of cloud-based applications, sorted into categories: http://www.cloudtrip.com/index.php?category=Education
  • EyeOS is an Open Source Platform designed to hold a wide variety of Web Applications over it: http://eyeos.org/en/?section=home
  • A partnership between SimTone Corporation and Frank Porter Graham Elementary School in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, will leverage cloud computing technologies to provide students and staff with virtual computers: http://www.simtone.net/snapbook.htm
  • Collections of images can be used for research or learning in a wide range of disciplines; for instance, histology images on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=histology&m=text
  • Wolfram Research puts Mathematica in the Cloud.
    http://www.wolfram.com/news/m7hpc.html
    Wolfram Research introduced instant integrated parallelism at the Supercomputing 2008 conference (SC08) as part of Mathematica 7, a major release that enhances the company's full line of innovative HPC solutions which also includes gridMathematica, Wolfram Lightweight Grid System, and HPC Cloud Service for Mathematica. For the first time, every copy of Mathematica 7 comes standard with the technology to parallelize computations over multiple cores or over networks of Mathematica deployed across a grid. Integrating parallel computing with Mathematica means that millions of users worldwide can now start to use and build parallel solutions for their technical computing problems.

[edit] For Further Reading

[edit] Share More Examples or Resources

If you have additional examples, please add them below:

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