Showing papers on "Cloud computing published in 2013"

A survey of mobile cloud computing: architecture, applications, and approaches

Abstract: Together with an explosive growth of the mobile applications and emerging of cloud computing concept, mobile cloud computing (MCC) has been introduced to be a potential technology for mobile services. MCC integrates the cloud computing into the mobile environment and overcomes obstacles related to the performance (e.g., battery life, storage, and bandwidth), environment (e.g., heterogeneity, scalability, and availability), and security (e.g., reliability and privacy) discussed in mobile computing. This paper gives a survey of MCC, which helps general readers have an overview of the MCC including the definition, architecture, and applications. The issues, existing solutions, and approaches are presented. In addition, the future research directions of MCC are discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Scalable and Secure Sharing of Personal Health Records in Cloud Computing Using Attribute-Based Encryption

Abstract: Personal health record (PHR) is an emerging patient-centric model of health information exchange, which is often outsourced to be stored at a third party, such as cloud providers. However, there have been wide privacy concerns as personal health information could be exposed to those third party servers and to unauthorized parties. To assure the patients' control over access to their own PHRs, it is a promising method to encrypt the PHRs before outsourcing. Yet, issues such as risks of privacy exposure, scalability in key management, flexible access, and efficient user revocation, have remained the most important challenges toward achieving fine-grained, cryptographically enforced data access control. In this paper, we propose a novel patient-centric framework and a suite of mechanisms for data access control to PHRs stored in semitrusted servers. To achieve fine-grained and scalable data access control for PHRs, we leverage attribute-based encryption (ABE) techniques to encrypt each patient's PHR file. Different from previous works in secure data outsourcing, we focus on the multiple data owner scenario, and divide the users in the PHR system into multiple security domains that greatly reduces the key management complexity for owners and users. A high degree of patient privacy is guaranteed simultaneously by exploiting multiauthority ABE. Our scheme also enables dynamic modification of access policies or file attributes, supports efficient on-demand user/attribute revocation and break-glass access under emergency scenarios. Extensive analytical and experimental results are presented which show the security, scalability, and efficiency of our proposed scheme.

Privacy-Preserving Public Auditing for Secure Cloud Storage

Abstract: Using cloud storage, users can remotely store their data and enjoy the on-demand high-quality applications and services from a shared pool of configurable computing resources, without the burden of local data storage and maintenance. However, the fact that users no longer have physical possession of the outsourced data makes the data integrity protection in cloud computing a formidable task, especially for users with constrained computing resources. Moreover, users should be able to just use the cloud storage as if it is local, without worrying about the need to verify its integrity. Thus, enabling public auditability for cloud storage is of critical importance so that users can resort to a third-party auditor (TPA) to check the integrity of outsourced data and be worry free. To securely introduce an effective TPA, the auditing process should bring in no new vulnerabilities toward user data privacy, and introduce no additional online burden to user. In this paper, we propose a secure cloud storage system supporting privacy-preserving public auditing. We further extend our result to enable the TPA to perform audits for multiple users simultaneously and efficiently. Extensive security and performance analysis show the proposed schemes are provably secure and highly efficient. Our preliminary experiment conducted on Amazon EC2 instance further demonstrates the fast performance of the design.

Cloud Computing: Principles and Paradigms

Abstract: The primary purpose of this book is to capture the state-of-the-art in Cloud Computing technologies and applications. The book will also aim to identify potential research directions and technologies that will facilitate creation a global market-place of cloud computing services supporting scientific, industrial, business, and consumer applications. We expect the book to serve as a reference for larger audience such as systems architects, practitioners, developers, new researchers and graduate level students. This area of research is relatively recent, and as such has no existing reference book that addresses it.This book will be a timely contribution to a field that is gaining considerable research interest, momentum, and is expected to be of increasing interest to commercial developers. The book is targeted for professional computer science developers and graduate students especially at Masters level. As Cloud Computing is recognized as one of the top five emerging technologies that will have a major impact on the quality of science and society over the next 20 years, its knowledge will help position our readers at the forefront of the field.

Are we ready for SDN? Implementation challenges for software-defined networks

Abstract: Cloud services are exploding, and organizations are converging their data centers in order to take advantage of the predictability, continuity, and quality of service delivered by virtualization technologies. In parallel, energy-efficient and high-security networking is of increasing importance. Network operators, and service and product providers require a new network solution to efficiently tackle the increasing demands of this changing network landscape. Software-defined networking has emerged as an efficient network technology capable of supporting the dynamic nature of future network functions and intelligent applications while lowering operating costs through simplified hardware, software, and management. In this article, the question of how to achieve a successful carrier grade network with software-defined networking is raised. Specific focus is placed on the challenges of network performance, scalability, security, and interoperability with the proposal of potential solution directions.

Dynamic Resource Allocation Using Virtual Machines for Cloud Computing Environment

Abstract: Cloud computing allows business customers to scale up and down their resource usage based on needs. Many of the touted gains in the cloud model come from resource multiplexing through virtualization technology. In this paper, we present a system that uses virtualization technology to allocate data center resources dynamically based on application demands and support green computing by optimizing the number of servers in use. We introduce the concept of "skewness” to measure the unevenness in the multidimensional resource utilization of a server. By minimizing skewness, we can combine different types of workloads nicely and improve the overall utilization of server resources. We develop a set of heuristics that prevent overload in the system effectively while saving energy used. Trace driven simulation and experiment results demonstrate that our algorithm achieves good performance.

Internet of Things: Converging Technologies for Smart Environments and Integrated Ecosystems

Abstract: The book aims to provide a broad overview of various topics of the Internet of Things (IoT) from the research and development priorities to enabling technologies, architecture, security, privacy, interoperability and industrial applications. It is intended to be a standalone book in a series that covers the Internet of Things activities of the IERC ? Internet of Things European Research Cluster from technology to international cooperation and the global "state of play". The book builds on the ideas put forward by the European research Cluster on the Internet of Things Strategic Research Agenda and presents global views and state of the art results on the challenges facing the research, development and deployment of IoT at the global level.

Energy-Optimal Mobile Cloud Computing under Stochastic Wireless Channel

Abstract: This paper provides a theoretical framework of energy-optimal mobile cloud computing under stochastic wireless channel. Our objective is to conserve energy for the mobile device, by optimally executing mobile applications in the mobile device (i.e., mobile execution) or offloading to the cloud (i.e., cloud execution). One can, in the former case sequentially reconfigure the CPU frequency; or in the latter case dynamically vary the data transmission rate to the cloud, in response to the stochastic channel condition. We formulate both scheduling problems as constrained optimization problems, and obtain closed-form solutions for optimal scheduling policies. Furthermore, for the energy-optimal execution strategy of applications with small output data (e.g., CloudAV), we derive a threshold policy, which states that the data consumption rate, defined as the ratio between the data size (L) and the delay constraint (T), is compared to a threshold which depends on both the energy consumption model and the wireless channel model. Finally, numerical results suggest that a significant amount of energy can be saved for the mobile device by optimally offloading mobile applications to the cloud in some cases. Our theoretical framework and numerical investigations will shed lights on system implementation of mobile cloud computing under stochastic wireless channel.

Market-Oriented Cloud Computing: Vision, Hype, and Reality for Delivering IT Services as Computing Utilities

Abstract: This keynote paper: presents a 21 st century vision of computing; identifies various computing paradigms promising to deliver the vision of computing utilities; defines Cloud computing and provides the architecture for creating market-oriented Clouds by leveraging technologies such as VMs; provides thoughts on marketbased resource management strategies that encompass both customer-driven service management and computational risk management to sustain SLA-oriented resource allocation; presents some representative Cloud platforms especially those developed in industries along with our current work towards realising market-oriented resource allocation of Clouds by leveraging the 3 rd generation Aneka enterprise Grid technology; reveals our early thoughts on interconnecting Clouds for dynamically creating an atmospheric computing environment along with pointers to future community research; and concludes with the need for convergence of competing IT paradigms for delivering our 21 st century vision.

An analysis of security issues for cloud computing

Abstract: Cloud Computing is a flexible, cost-effective, and proven delivery platform for providing business or consumer IT services over the Internet. However, cloud Computing presents an added level of risk because essential services are often outsourced to a third party, which makes it harder to maintain data security and privacy, support data and service availability, and demonstrate compliance. Cloud Computing leverages many technologies (SOA, virtualization, Web 2.0); it also inherits their security issues, which we discuss here, identifying the main vulnerabilities in this kind of systems and the most important threats found in the literature related to Cloud Computing and its environment as well as to identify and relate vulnerabilities and threats with possible solutions.

Data Center Network Virtualization: A Survey

Abstract: With the growth of data volumes and variety of Internet applications, data centers (DCs) have become an efficient and promising infrastructure for supporting data storage, and providing the platform for the deployment of diversified network services and applications (e.g., video streaming, cloud computing). These applications and services often impose multifarious resource demands (storage, compute power, bandwidth, latency) on the underlying infrastructure. Existing data center architectures lack the flexibility to effectively support these applications, which results in poor support of QoS, deployability, manageability, and defence against security attacks. Data center network virtualization is a promising solution to address these problems. Virtualized data centers are envisioned to provide better management flexibility, lower cost, scalability, better resources utilization, and energy efficiency. In this paper, we present a survey of the current state-of-the-art in data center networks virtualization, and provide a detailed comparison of the surveyed proposals. We discuss the key research challenges for future research and point out some potential directions for tackling the problems related to data center design.

DepSky: Dependable and Secure Storage in a Cloud-of-Clouds

Abstract: The increasing popularity of cloud storage services has lead companies that handle critical data to think about using these services for their storage needs. Medical record databases, large biomedical datasets, historical information about power systems and financial data are some examples of critical data that could be moved to the cloud. However, the reliability and security of data stored in the cloud still remain major concerns. In this work we present DepSky, a system that improves the availability, integrity, and confidentiality of information stored in the cloud through the encryption, encoding, and replication of the data on diverse clouds that form a cloud-of-clouds. We deployed our system using four commercial clouds and used PlanetLab to run clients accessing the service from different countries. We observed that our protocols improved the perceived availability, and in most cases, the access latency, when compared with cloud providers individually. Moreover, the monetary costs of using DepSky in this scenario is at most twice the cost of using a single cloud, which is optimal and seems to be a reasonable cost, given the benefits.

Honey bee behavior inspired load balancing of tasks in cloud computing environments

Abstract: Scheduling of tasks in cloud computing is an NP-hard optimization problem. Load balancing of non-preemptive independent tasks on virtual machines (VMs) is an important aspect of task scheduling in clouds. Whenever certain VMs are overloaded and remaining VMs are under loaded with tasks for processing, the load has to be balanced to achieve optimal machine utilization. In this paper, we propose an algorithm named honey bee behavior inspired load balancing (HBB-LB), which aims to achieve well balanced load across virtual machines for maximizing the throughput. The proposed algorithm also balances the priorities of tasks on the machines in such a way that the amount of waiting time of the tasks in the queue is minimal. We have compared the proposed algorithm with existing load balancing and scheduling algorithms. The experimental results show that the algorithm is effective when compared with existing algorithms. Our approach illustrates that there is a significant improvement in average execution time and reduction in waiting time of tasks on queue.

Cloud computing adoption by SMEs in the north east of England: A multi‐perspective framework

Abstract: – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a growing body of research on cloud computing, by studying the small to medium‐sized enterprise (SME) adoption process. If SMEs have access to scalable technologies they could potentially deliver products and services that in the past only large enterprises could deliver, flattening the competitive arena., – By adopting the Technological, Organisational and Environmental (TOE) framework as a theoretical base, this qualitative exploratory study used semi‐structured interviews to collect data in 15 different SMEs and service providers in the north east of England. The north east of England was selected as it is a region that aspires to become home to innovative digital firms and most of the companies in the region are SMEs., – The main factors that were identified as playing a significant role in SME adoption of cloud services were: relative advantage, uncertainty, geo‐restriction, compatibility, trialability, size, top management support, prior experience, innovativeness, industry, market scope, supplier efforts and external computing support. In contrast, this study did not find enough evidence that competitive pressure was a significant determinant of cloud computing adoption., – These findings have important implications and great value to the research community, managers and information and communication technologies (ICT) providers, in terms of formulating better strategies for cloud computing adoption. For service providers, using the research model in this study can assist in increasing their understanding of why some SMEs choose to adopt cloud computing services, while seemingly similar ones facing similar market conditions do not. Also, cloud computing providers may need to improve their interaction with SMEs which are involved in the cloud computing experience, in an effort to create a healthy environment for cloud computing adoption, and to remove any vagueness surrounding this type of technology., – This study is an attempt to explore and develop an SME cloud computing adoption model that was theoretically grounded in the TOE framework. By adopting the TOE framework this study has shown that the three contexts of this framework (technological, organisational, and environmental) are connected to each other.

An Efficient and Secure Dynamic Auditing Protocol for Data Storage in Cloud Computing

Abstract: In cloud computing, data owners host their data on cloud servers and users (data consumers) can access the data from cloud servers. Due to the data outsourcing, however, this new paradigm of data hosting service also introduces new security challenges, which requires an independent auditing service to check the data integrity in the cloud. Some existing remote integrity checking methods can only serve for static archive data and, thus, cannot be applied to the auditing service since the data in the cloud can be dynamically updated. Thus, an efficient and secure dynamic auditing protocol is desired to convince data owners that the data are correctly stored in the cloud. In this paper, we first design an auditing framework for cloud storage systems and propose an efficient and privacy-preserving auditing protocol. Then, we extend our auditing protocol to support the data dynamic operations, which is efficient and provably secure in the random oracle model. We further extend our auditing protocol to support batch auditing for both multiple owners and multiple clouds, without using any trusted organizer. The analysis and simulation results show that our proposed auditing protocols are secure and efficient, especially it reduce the computation cost of the auditor.

Network virtualization and software defined networking for cloud computing: a survey

Abstract: Network virtualization is the key to the current and future success of cloud computing. In this article, we explain key reasons for virtualization and briefly explain several of the networking technologies that have been developed recently or are being developed in various standards bodies. In particular, we explain software defined networking, which is the key to network programmability. We also illustrate SDN?s applicability with our own research on OpenADN - application delivery in a multi-cloud environment.

Leveraging the capabilities of service-oriented decision support systems: Putting analytics and big data in cloud

Abstract: Using service-oriented decision support systems (DSS in cloud) is one of the major trends for many organizations in hopes of becoming more agile. In this paper, after defining a list of requirements for service-oriented DSS, we propose a conceptual framework for DSS in cloud, and discus about research directions. A unique contribution of this paper is its perspective on how to servitize the product oriented DSS environment, and demonstrate the opportunities and challenges of engineering service oriented DSS in cloud. When we define data, information and analytics as services, we see that traditional measurement mechanisms, which are mainly time and cost driven, do not work well. Organizations need to consider value of service level and quality in addition to the cost and duration of delivered services. DSS in CLOUD enables scale, scope and speed economies. This article contributes new knowledge in service science by tying the information technology strategy perspectives to the database and design science perspectives for a broader audience.

Mobile fog: a programming model for large-scale applications on the internet of things

Abstract: The ubiquitous deployment of mobile and sensor devices is creating a new environment, namely the Internet of Things(IoT), that enables a wide range of future Internet applications. In this work, we present Mobile Fog, a high level programming model for the future Internet applications that are geospatially distributed, large-scale, and latency-sensitive. We analyze use cases for the programming model with camera network and connected vehicle applications to show the efficacy of Mobile Fog. We also evaluate application performance through simulation.

Security and Privacy in Cloud Computing

Abstract: Recent advances have given rise to the popularity and success of cloud computing. However, when outsourcing the data and business application to a third party causes the security and privacy issues to become a critical concern. Throughout the study at hand, the authors obtain a common goal to provide a comprehensive review of the existing security and privacy issues in cloud environments. We have identified five most representative security and privacy attributes (i.e., confidentiality, integrity, availability, accountability, and privacy-preservability). Beginning with these attributes, we present the relationships among them, the vulnerabilities that may be exploited by attackers, the threat models, as well as existing defense strategies in a cloud scenario. Future research directions are previously determined for each attribute.

Unikernels: library operating systems for the cloud

Abstract: We present unikernels, a new approach to deploying cloud services via applications written in high-level source code. Unikernels are single-purpose appliances that are compile-time specialised into standalone kernels, and sealed against modification when deployed to a cloud platform. In return they offer significant reduction in image sizes, improved efficiency and security, and should reduce operational costs. Our Mirage prototype compiles OCaml code into unikernels that run on commodity clouds and offer an order of magnitude reduction in code size without significant performance penalty. The architecture combines static type-safety with a single address-space layout that can be made immutable via a hypervisor extension. Mirage contributes a suite of type-safe protocol libraries, and our results demonstrate that the hypervisor is a platform that overcomes the hardware compatibility issues that have made past library operating systems impractical to deploy in the real-world.

Trinity: a distributed graph engine on a memory cloud

Abstract: Computations performed by graph algorithms are data driven, and require a high degree of random data access. Despite the great progresses made in disk technology, it still cannot provide the level of efficient random access required by graph computation. On the other hand, memory-based approaches usually do not scale due to the capacity limit of single machines. In this paper, we introduce Trinity, a general purpose graph engine over a distributed memory cloud. Through optimized memory management and network communication, Trinity supports fast graph exploration as well as efficient parallel computing. In particular, Trinity leverages graph access patterns in both online and offline computation to optimize memory and communication for best performance. These enable Trinity to support efficient online query processing and offline analytics on large graphs with just a few commodity machines. Furthermore, Trinity provides a high level specification language called TSL for users to declare data schema and communication protocols, which brings great ease-of-use for general purpose graph management and computing. Our experiments show Trinity's performance in both low latency graph queries as well as high throughput graph analytics on web-scale, billion-node graphs.