Those of us who are involved in watching or are engaged in the current technological trends will be quick to babble endlessly about the hottest new craze: cloud computing. As a brief introduction for those of you who are as of yet unaware of this progression in business customer relationship through the use of internet technology, I will explain: First of all, the term “cloud” is merely a metaphor, and does not imply that Internet users everywhere are interested in the discipline of meteorology. What it does do, however, is provide a myriad of resources, applications, and services at highly variable and scalable levels to customers through the medium of the Internet. The academic definition of the term cloud computing is that of a paradigm of computers wherein the now dissolving boundaries of Internet use will be defined more on economic reasoning than any sort of technological limitations. That is to say, you can do your work – whatever that may be – anytime and anywhere, operating off of the hardware and hard drives of someone else.
So what does this mean? And more importantly, who is doing research into cloud computing? These are important questions to ask, especially if you are a business interested in encouraging and improving customer relations. In fact, in the coming days, most companies will probably have to incorporate elements and applications related to cloud computing and customer relationship management.
The amount of and the stunningly diverse range of companies now involved in the cloud computing trend harkens back to earlier days of the internet. While much of it is hazy and hard to understand at first, the cloud is more than merely smoke and mirrors. Some of the biggest names in the business world are in fact actively engaged in either the research of, the promotion of, or the integration of cloud computing or its relevant principles and tenets. A few of the more well-known names include Google, IBM, Amazon, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and Cisco, among others.
The prospects of the emerging technologies that will be available in the near future and that are being experimented with or researched today are numerous and prophetic in scope. Many large and important companies are throwing lots of money into this, and they will not see it wasted. For instance, Yahoo! is actively providing support for academic research into cloud computing. According to their website, the biggest problem in implementing this technology at a large scale is significant barriers in costs, operational tools, and software.
The academic research going into cloud computing is just as varied as the companies that are supporting it. For instance, University of Minnesota is conducting research into developing a “nebula,” which is a theoretical distribution of resources, voluntarily donated by “end-user hosts”, to form a computing network.
Despite all the hype and academic research surrounding this new technology, there are still many concerns. Chief among these concerns are details about security and privacy, but the University of Washington and CloudViews are actively working on that. In other areas of academic research into cloud computing research, the Max Planck Institute has outlined something called a “trusted cloud computing platform”.
There are in fact dozens upon dozens of individuals, major companies, and academic or technical institutions that are engaged in ground breaking research with cloud computing technology. One could say without being too facetious that a more proper question is not “who is researching cloud computing,” but rather, “who isn’t?”
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