Something about Cloud Computing & Answers for lecture 6.

Part 1. Cloud Computing

First, we come to talk something about cloud computing.

Nowadays, most computers are not stand-alone devices for personal computing, but connected together by Internet and used for both communication and individual computing activities. Cloud computing is not only a combination of computational capabilities. So, what is cloud computing? Cloud Computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand. It also implies the services provided over the Internet as both the hardware and system software on the Data-centres provided by service provider.

Cloud computing comprises following two levels:
Front end users: customers or users using those service on their device
Back end users: service provider or vendor managing the services

Then, what’s the strong point of cloud computing? Let’s raise a common case, suppose that your mobile phone hasn’t been installed any app which supports PPT file. Thus any PPT document cannot be read on your mobile. But if you have Internet access, then, you can upload the file to your Google Doc account. And then, you can read the data of that PPT file on Google Doc. Thus cloud computing saves your time and money. You need not have any supporting software to run any application. The service provider provides the configuration required to run any application on your system. Moreover you also need not have high processing hardware. You only need a device (PC/MOBILE/PAD etc.) and web browser to access a cloud and run your application.

There are many types of public cloud computing:

• Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
• Platform as a service (PaaS)
• Software as a service (SaaS)
• Storage as a service (STaaS)
• Security as a service (SECaaS)
• Data as a service (DaaS)
• Test environment as a service (TEaaS)
• Desktop as a service (DaaS)
• API as a service (APIaaS)
• Backend as a service (Baas)

And the three most important types are SaaS, PaaS and IaaS.

Software as a Service:
This is the most widely used Cloud Computing approach to date. Software as a service, delivers a single application through the browser to thousands of customers using a multitenant architecture. Like: you can edit a photo online on picself.cn so you need not install the photo editing software on your system- thus providing software as a service.
Examples: Gmail, Google docs, Skydrive.

Platform as a Service:
PaaS delivers development environments as a service. You can build your own applications that run on the provider's infrastructure and are delivered to your users via the Internet from the provider's servers. All the development tools will be provided to you.
Examples: Google App Engine, Windows Azure.

Infrastructure as a Service:
In the IaaS model, it provides you the infrastructure (like storage) required to host the services yourself i.e. makes you the system administrator and manage hardware/storage, network and computing resources. It is very much the backbone of the entire Cloud Computing concept.
Examples: Google Gears, Amazon Simple Storage Service.

There are four deployment models of cloud computing.

At last, I want to recommend you a website, IFTTT (If This Then That), www.ifttt.com. I think it’s kind of cloud computing website which consists of both SaaS and IaaS. You’d better have a try, and I believe you will like it.

Part 2. Answers for lecture 6.

Question 1.What is the definition of Social Cloud?
Answer: A Social Cloud is a resource and service sharing framework utilizing relationships established between members of a social network. It can change the situation that some individual users of a social network are bounded by finite capacity and limited capabilities. A cloud-based usage model is used to enable virtualized resource sharing through service-based interfaces.

Questions 2.What are the possible applications of a Social Cloud?
Answer: There may be five possible types of applications of a Social Cloud.
1. A Social Computation Cloud: such as web-based email service.
2. A Social Storage Cloud: such as SkyDrive by Microsoft.
3. A Social Collaborative Cloud: such as MyExperiment.org.
4. A Social Cloud for Public Science: such as BOINC.
5. An Enterprise Social Cloud: such as Moodle@CUHK.

In Activity One, my aim is to make an understanding of Social Could by reading the paper. But in Activity Two, my aim is to correct and update my previous answers by sharing ideas with my teammates, because I can refer to others’ understandings.

And I think there are some differences between individual and group epistemic cognition. Such as in terms of group epistemic cognition; the certainty, sources and justification of knowledge is stronger than individual cognition. We can learn from each other, not only from the article.

In Activity One, I answered the questions individually; just refer to the paper itself and my own experiences. But in Activity Two, I combine others’ ideas with my own and update my previous answers. I learned more through the process of interacting with my teammates.