Feature Articles from cloud_computing

Cloud Computing Will Usher in a New Era of Science Discovery

(01/26/2010) - Computation is commonly considered the third mode of science, where the previous modes or paradigms were experimentation/observation and theory. With the introduction of high performance supercomputers, the methods of scientific research could include mathematical models and simulation of phenomenon that are too expensive or beyond our experiment's reach. With the advent of cloud computing, a fourth mode of science is on the horizon.
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Security -- The Dark Side of the Cloud

(01/25/2010) - Despite the many benefits to cloud computing, security remains one of the biggest challenges. IT organizations have a hard enough time defending their in-house private cloud resources. Companies offering public cloud, pay-for-usage models are faced with a more difficult challenge since they must serve multiple organizations on the same platform. In response to security threats, there is an opportunity for innovation of flexible cloud-based security service offerings.
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The Impact of Cloud Computing on Internal IT Governance

(01/25/2010) - In theory, the realization of IT governance should be a seamless process running from the board room to actual delivery of IT services. In practice however, many organizations have an institutionalized steering committee with its associated processes that supports the organization's IT related goals while the IT group has a leadership team or council whose governance activities are focused inward on such things as technical issues, standards, and resource management.
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The Impact of Cloud Computing on Corporate IT Governance

(01/25/2010) - While cloud computing is enabling some fundamental changes on how IT groups deliver services, from a corporate management viewpoint, the basic principles of IT governance still remain true. However, the advent of cloud computing is having an increasing impact on how the components of the governance process are executed. For the purpose of this article, we will use the COBIT model (Control OBjectives for Information and related Technology) that is comprised of five major process focus areas: Strategy Alignment, Value Delivery, Resource Management, Risk Management, and Performance Measurement.
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Cloud Computing Vendors for HPC

(11/03/2009) - The number of cloud offerings for HPC users seems to be growing by the day. In this article, we attempt to aggregate all the current vendors with products that address the cloud delivery model for high performance computing applications.
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Timesharing 2.0

(11/03/2009) - Is cloud computing today's hot technology that promises to lower TCO, reduce energy costs, and enable dynamic, agile datacenters -- or is it just the latest hype? That is, will cloud computing really happen and will it deliver on its promises? And what does it mean for high performance computing?
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Cloud for Academia?

(11/02/2009) - Grid computing was born in academia and was originally designed to support scientific and research computing. In contrast, cloud computing has a business background and is designed to enable the delivery of scalable Web applications. The BEinGRID project has looked into how Grid is appropriate for business use, but what about looking at whether the cloud is useful for academia?
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Cloud Computing Opportunities in HPC

(11/02/2009) - High-end, public cloud computing offerings represent a convergence of grid and Internet technologies, potentially enabling workable new business models. Smaller, private clouds are a technical evolution that expands the ease of use and deployment of grids in more organizations.
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Grids or Clouds for HPC?

(11/02/2009) - Time and again, people ask questions like "Will HPC move to the cloud?" or "Now that cloud computing is accepted, are grids dead?" or even "Should I now build my grid in the cloud?" Despite all the promising developments in the grid and cloud computing space, and the avalanche of publications and talks on this subject, many people still seem to be confused and hesitant to take the next step.
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Grid Computing Done Right

(11/02/2009) - Writing and implementing high performance computing applications is all about efficiency, parallelism, scalability, cache optimizations and making best use of whatever resources are available -- be they multicore processors or application accelerators, such as FPGAs or GPUs. HPC applications have been developed for, and successfully run on, grids for many years now.
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