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National Science Foundation Awards $20 Million For Cloud Computing Experiments

Posted by samzenpus on from the paying-the-way-to-the-future dept.

aarondubrow writes The National Science Foundation today announced two $10 million projects to create cloud computing testbeds — to be called "Chameleon" and "CloudLab" — that will enable the academic research community to experiment with novel cloud architectures and pursue new, architecturally-enabled applications of cloud computing. While most of the original concepts for cloud computing came from the academic research community, as clouds grew in popularity, industry drove much of the design of their architecture. Today's awards complement industry's efforts and enable academic researchers to advance cloud computing architectures that can support a new generation of innovative applications, including real-time and safety-critical applications like those used in medical devices, power grids, and transportation systems.

3 of 25 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What do they mean by cloud? by Lennie · · Score: 3

    Why do people think "virtualized computing" is cloud ? It isn't. Because a VMWare cluster isn't cloud.

    Cloud has characteristics like:
    - pay per use
    - API to control it, so it can be automated
    - a failure model, like availability zones. So you know that things are 100 % seperated so if one AZ goes down an other AZ does not depend on it.
    - etc.

    Nobody says it has to be virtual either, you can get physical machines from Rackspace or Softlayer.

    --
    New things are always on the horizon
  2. Re:What do they mean by cloud? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Cloud has characteristics like:

    -Consists of vapour (not necessarely water)
    -Is a silver bullet (any IT-problem)
    -Strong SEP field (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_Else%27s_Problem#Fiction)
    -Drawn in powerpoints as a fluffy, obscure image resembling a cloud (hence the name)

  3. Re:What do they mean by cloud? by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Whenever these kinds of stories come up I really wonder what they mean by "cloud computing"

    Cloud computing got popular when thin client got boring. These marketing generalizations always drive me crazy. If you have an on-line storage or backup service, just call it that. If it is on-line music streaming service, web based office tools, whatever just call it what it is. Otherwise, you just piss off those that get it and confuse those that don't.