A számítási felhő az Európai Unió egén (Cloud computing on the sky of European Union)

Napjaink informatikai világának talán legkeresettebb hívó szava a cloud computing, vagy magyar fordításban, a számítási felhő. A fordítás forrása az EU-s (Digitális Menetrend magyar változata, 2010) A számítási felhő üzleti modelljének részletes leírását adja (Bőgel, 2009). Bőgel György ismerteti az új, közműszerű informatikai szolgáltatás kialakulását és gazdasági előnyeit, nagy jövőt jósolva a számítási felhőnek az üzleti modellek versenyében. A szerző – a számítási felhő üzleti előnyei mellett – nagyobb hangsúlyt fektet dolgozatában a gyors elterjedést gátló tényezőkre, és arra, hogy mit jelentenek az előnyök és a hátrányok egy üzleti, informatikai vagy megfelelőségi vezető számára. Nem csökkentve a cloud modell gazdasági jelentőségét, fontosnak tartja, hogy a problémákról és a kockázatokról is szóljon. Kiemeli, hogy a kockázatokban – különösen a biztonsági és adatvédelmi kockázatokban – lényeges különbségek vannak az Európai Gazdasági Térség és a világ többi része, pl. az Amerikai Egyesült Államok között. A cikkben rámutat ezekre a különbségekre, és az olvasó magyarázatot kap arra is, hogy miért várható a számítási felhő lassabb terjedése Európában, mint a világ más részein. Bemutatja az EU erőfeszítéseit is a számítási felhő európai terjedésének elősegítésére, tekintettel a modell versenyképességet növelő hatására. / === / One of the most popular concept of the recent web searches is cloud computing. Several authors present detailed description of the new service model and it's business benefits and cite the optimistic prognoses of the cloud experts regarding the competition of information system service models. The author analyses the operational benefits of the cloud application and give a detailed description of the inhibitors of the fast expansion of the service modell. He also analyses the pros and cons of the cloud for a business manager, an information and a compliance officer. When understanding the advantages of the cloud, it is equally important to review the problems and risks associated with the model. The paper gives a list of the expected cloud-specific risks. It also explains the differences in security and data protection approach between the European Economic Area and the rest of the world, including the USA. The explains why slower expansion of the cloud modell is expected in Europe than in the rest of the world. The efforts of the EU Committee in helping to spread the cloud model is also presented, as the EU's officers consider the model as an important element of competitiveness.

ERP-rendszerek a számítási felhőben (cloud computing) - A felhőtechnikával összefüggő új ERP-kiválasztási kritériumok elemzése (ERP systems within cloud – Criteria for selection of ERP systems in a cloud environment)

Néhány éve vonult be a köztudatba a cloud computing fogalom, mely ma már a szakirodalomban és az informatikai alkalmazásokban is egyre nagyobb teret foglal el. Ez az új IT-technológia a számítási felhő számítástechnikai szolgáltatásaihoz kapcsolódó ERP-rendszerek szabványosítását, elterjedését eredményezi. A szerzők cikkükben áttekintést adnak a cloud computing mai helyzetéről és a számítási felhőben működő adatfeldolgozó rendszerekkel (kiemelten ERP) kapcsolatos felhasználói elvárásokról, illetve kezdeti, németországi alkalmazási tapasztalatokról. Külön tárgyalják az ERP-rendszerek új kiválasztási céljait és kritériumait, melyek a felhőkörnyezet speciális lehetőségei miatt alakultak ki. _____ The concept of ‘Cloud’ as an IT notion emerged in the past years and proliferated within the business and IT professional community. The concept of cloud gained awareness both in the professional and scientific literature and in the practice of IT/IS world. The cloud has a profound impact on the Business Information Systems, especially on ERP systems. Indirectly, the cloud leads to a massive standardization on ERP systems and their services. In this paper, the authors provide a literature overview about the current situation of Cloud Computing and the requirements established by end-users against the other data processing facilities and systems, outstandingly the ERP systems. The majority of investigated cases are based on samples from Germany. Furthermore, the initial experiences of application are discussed. Separately, the recent selection objectives and criteria for ERP systems are investigated that came into existence because the appearance of Cloud in the IT environment.

A Framework for Security Transparency in Cloud Computing

Individuals and corporate users are persistently considering cloud adoption due to its significant benefits compared to traditional computing environments. The data and applications in the cloud are stored in an environment that is separated, managed and maintained externally to the organisation. Therefore, it is essential for cloud providers to demonstrate and implement adequate security practices to protect the data and processes put under their stewardship. Security transparency in the cloud is likely to become the core theme that underpins the systematic disclosure of security designs and practices that enhance customer confidence in using cloud service and deployment models. In this paper, we present a framework that enables a detailed analysis of security transparency for cloud based systems. In particular, we consider security transparency from three different levels of abstraction, i.e., conceptual, organisation and technical levels, and identify the relevant concepts within these levels. This allows us to provide an elaboration of the essential concepts at the core of transparency and analyse the means for implementing them from a technical perspective. Finally, an example from a real world migration context is given to provide a solid discussion on the applicability of the proposed framework.

FlorNExT®, a cloud computing application to estimate growth and yield of maritime pine (Pinus pinaster Ait.) stands in Northeastern Portugal

Aim of the study: To introduce and describe FlorNExT®, a free cloud computing application to estimate growth and yield of maritime pine (Pinus pinaster Ait.) even-aged stands in the Northeast of Portugal (NE Portugal). Area of study: NE Portugal. Material and methods: FlorNExT® implements a dynamic growth and yield modelling framework which integrates transition functions for dominant height (site index curves) and basal area, as well as output functions for tree and stand volume, biomass, and carbon content. Main results: FlorNExT® is freely available from any device with an Internet connection at: http://flornext.esa.ipb.pt/. Research highlights: This application has been designed to make it possible for any stakeholder to easily estimate standing volume, biomass, and carbon content in maritime pine stands from stand data, as well as to estimate growth and yield based on four stand variables: age, density, dominant height, and basal area. FlorNExT® allows planning thinning treatments. FlorNExT® is a fundamental tool to support forest mobilization at local and regional scales in NE Portugal. Material and methods: FlorNExT® implements a dynamic growth and yield modelling framework which integrates transition functions for dominant height (site index curves) and basal area, as well as output functions for tree and stand volume, biomass, and carbon content. Main results: FlorNExT® is freely available from any device with an Internet connection at: http://flornext.esa.ipb.pt/. Research highlights: This application has been designed to make it possible for any stakeholder to easily estimate standing volume, biomass, and carbon content in maritime pine stands from stand data, as well as to estimate growth and yield based on four stand variables: age, density, dominant height, and basal area. FlorNExT® allows planning thinning treatments. FlorNExT® is a fundamental tool to support forest mobilization at local and regional scales in NE Portugal.

Software para apoio à gestão de empresas recorrendo a Cloud Computing

Dissertação apresentada ao Instituto Politécnico de Castelo Branco para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Mestre em Desenvolvimento de Software e Sistemas Interativos, realizada sob a orientação científica do Doutor Fernando Reinaldo Silva Garcia Ribeiro e do Doutor José Carlos Meireles Monteiro Metrôlho, Professores Adjuntos da Unidade Técnico-Científica de Informática da Escola Superior de Tecnologia do Instituto Politécnico de Castelo Branco.

Cloud Computing to Automate Information Units

This article will address the main technical aspects that facilitate the use and growth of computer technology in the cloud, which go hand in hand with the emergence of more and better services on the Internet and technological development of the broadband. Finally, we know what is the impact that the cloud computing technologies in the automation of information units.

Dietopro.com: una nueva herramienta de gestión dietoterapéutica basada en la tecnología cloud computing

Introducción: Los softwares dietoterapéuticos constituyen actualmente una herramienta básica en el tratamiento dietético de pacientes, ya sea desde un punto de vista fisiológico y/o patológico. Las nuevas tecnologías y la investigación en este sentido, han favorecido la aparición de nuevas aplicaciones de gestión dietético-nutricional que facilitan la gestión de la empresa dietoterapéutica. Objetivos: Estudiar comparativamente las principales aplicaciones dietoterapéuticas existentes en el mercado para dar criterio a los usuarios profesionales de la dietética y nutrición en la selección de una de las principales herramientas para éstos. Resultados: Desde nuestro punto de vista, dietopro. com resulta, junto con otras de las aplicaciones dietoterapéuticas analizadas, una de las más completas para la gestión de la clínica nutricional. Conclusión: En función de la necesidad del usuario, éste dispone de diferentes softwares dietéticos donde elegir. Se concluye que la selección de una u otra, depende de las necesidades del profesional.

QoS-oriented sesource allocation and scheduling of multiple composite web services in a hybrid cloud using a random-key genetic algorithm

In cloud computing resource allocation and scheduling of multiple composite web services is an important challenge. This is especially so in a hybrid cloud where there may be some free resources available from private clouds but some fee-paying resources from public clouds. Meeting this challenge involves two classical computational problems. One is assigning resources to each of the tasks in the composite web service. The other is scheduling the allocated resources when each resource may be used by more than one task and may be needed at different points of time. In addition, we must consider Quality-of-Service issues, such as execution time and running costs. Existing approaches to resource allocation and scheduling in public clouds and grid computing are not applicable to this new problem. This paper presents a random-key genetic algorithm that solves new resource allocation and scheduling problem. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and scalability of the algorithm.

QoS-oriented resource allocation and scheduling of multiple composite Web services in a hybrid cloud using a random-key genetic algorithm

In cloud computing resource allocation and scheduling of multiple composite web services is an important challenge. This is especially so in a hybrid cloud where there may be some free resources available from private clouds but some fee-paying resources from public clouds. Meeting this challenge involves two classical computational problems. One is assigning resources to each of the tasks in the composite web service. The other is scheduling the allocated resources when each resource may be used by more than one task and may be needed at different points of time. In addition, we must consider Quality-of-Service issues, such as execution time and running costs. Existing approaches to resource allocation and scheduling in public clouds and grid computing are not applicable to this new problem. This paper presents a random-key genetic algorithm that solves new resource allocation and scheduling problem. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and scalability of the algorithm.

Theoretical results of QoS-guaranteed resource scaling for cloud-based MapReduce

Quality of Service (QoS) is a new issue in cloud-based MapReduce, which is a popular computation model for parallel and distributed processing of big data. QoS guarantee is challenging in a dynamical computation environment due to the fact that a fixed resource allocation may become under-provisioning, which leads to QoS violation, or over-provisioning, which increases unnecessary resource cost. This requires runtime resource scaling to adapt environmental changes for QoS guarantee. Aiming to guarantee the QoS, which is referred as to hard deadline in this work, this paper develops a theory to determine how and when resource is scaled up/down for cloud-based MapReduce. The theory employs a nonlinear transformation to define the problem in a reverse resource space, simplifying the theoretical analysis significantly. Then, theoretical results are presented in three theorems on sufficient conditions for guaranteeing the QoS of cloud-based MapReduce. The superiority and applications of the theory are demonstrated through case studies.

PriDyn: Enabling Differentiated I/O Services in Cloud Using Dynamic Priorities

Virtualization is one of the key enabling technologies for Cloud computing. Although it facilitates improved utilization of resources, virtualization can lead to performance degradation due to the sharing of physical resources like CPU, memory, network interfaces, disk controllers, etc. Multi-tenancy can cause highly unpredictable performance for concurrent I/O applications running inside virtual machines that share local disk storage in Cloud. Disk I/O requests in a typical Cloud setup may have varied requirements in terms of latency and throughput as they arise from a range of heterogeneous applications having diverse performance goals. This necessitates providing differential performance services to different I/O applications. In this paper, we present PriDyn, a novel scheduling framework which is designed to consider I/O performance metrics of applications such as acceptable latency and convert them to an appropriate priority value for disk access based on the current system state. This framework aims to provide differentiated I/O service to various applications and ensures predictable performance for critical applications in multi-tenant Cloud environment. We demonstrate through experimental validations on real world I/O traces that this framework achieves appreciable enhancements in I/O performance, indicating that this approach is a promising step towards enabling QoS guarantees on Cloud storage.

Executing bag of distributed tasks on the cloud: Investigating the trade-offs between performance and cost

Bag of Distributed Tasks (BoDT) can benefit from decentralised execution on the Cloud. However, there is a trade-off between the performance that can be achieved by employing a large number of Cloud VMs for the tasks and the monetary constraints that are often placed by a user. The research reported in this paper is motivated towards investigating this trade-off so that an optimal plan for deploying BoDT applications on the cloud can be generated. A heuristic algorithm, which considers the user's preference of performance and cost is proposed and implemented. The feasibility of the algorithm is demonstrated by generating execution plans for a sample application. The key result is that the algorithm generates optimal execution plans for the application over 91% of the time.

Dynamic power management: from portable devices to high performance computing

Electronic applications are nowadays converging under the umbrella of the cloud computing vision. The future ecosystem of information and communication technology is going to integrate clouds of portable clients and embedded devices exchanging information, through the internet layer, with processing clusters of servers, data-centers and high performance computing systems. Even thus the whole society is waiting to embrace this revolution, there is a backside of the story. Portable devices require battery to work far from the power plugs and their storage capacity does not scale as the increasing power requirement does. At the other end processing clusters, such as data-centers and server farms, are build upon the integration of thousands multiprocessors. For each of them during the last decade the technology scaling has produced a dramatic increase in power density with significant spatial and temporal variability. This leads to power and temperature hot-spots, which may cause non-uniform ageing and accelerated chip failure. Nonetheless all the heat removed from the silicon translates in high cooling costs. Moreover trend in ICT carbon footprint shows that run-time power consumption of the all spectrum of devices accounts for a significant slice of entire world carbon emissions. This thesis work embrace the full ICT ecosystem and dynamic power consumption concerns by describing a set of new and promising system levels resource management techniques to reduce the power consumption and related issues for two corner cases: Mobile Devices and High Performance Computing.

SLA-Driven Simulation of Multi-Tenant Scalable Cloud-Distributed Enterprise Information Systems

Cloud Computing is an enabler for delivering large-scale, distributed enterprise applications with strict requirements in terms of performance. It is often the case that such applications have complex scaling and Service Level Agreement (SLA) management requirements. In this paper we present a simulation approach for validating and comparing SLA-aware scaling policies using the CloudSim simulator, using data from an actual Distributed Enterprise Information System (dEIS). We extend CloudSim with concurrent and multi-tenant task simulation capabilities. We then show how different scaling policies can be used for simulating multiple dEIS applications. We present multiple experiments depicting the impact of VM scaling on both datacenter energy consumption and dEIS performance indicators.