Major technical business companies like HP, Intel, and Yahoo, along with several educational and research organizations are coming together to create a global research test bed for cloud computing. They’ve also partnered with organizations like Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), the University of Illinios, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), and the National Science Foundation. Their goal is to create an environment where companies from different industries, academia, and governments can come together and research different cloud computing technologies without any financial or logistical barriers.

According to Yahoo Business, the network will be spread out between the IDA facilities, the University of Illinosis, the Steinbuch Centre for Computing, HP Labs, Intel Research, and Yahoo. Also, the infrastructure will contain HP hardware and Intel processors, around 1,000 to 4,000 processor cores.

Furthermore, Yahoo is providing leadership in open source projects through Apache Hadoop, a distributed computing software system, and Pig, a parallel programming language used for distributed computing. Moreover, IDA is supplying computing resources for developing cloud computing applications.

Each company and organization is excited at the prospects and opportunties that this new system will create.

“With this test bed, not only can researchers test applications at Internet scale, they will also have access to the underlying computing systems to advance understanding of how systems software and hardware function in a cloud environment,” Prabhakar Raghavan, head of Yahoo! Research.

HP hopes to use this system to conduct research in intelligent infrastructure and dynamic cloud services.

“To realize the full potential of cloud computing, the technology industry must think about the cloud as a platform for creating new services and experiences,” said Prith Banerjee, senior vice president of Research at HP and director of HP Labs. “The HP, Intel and Yahoo! Cloud Computing Test Bed lets us tap the brightest minds in the industry, academia and government to drive innovation in this area.”

Plus, since researchers will have full access to the network’s hardware, Intel may use this research to improve on their Data Center Management Interface (DCMI), Node Manager (NM) and virtualization platform features.

“Intel’s support of Tashi, an open source cluster management system for cloud computing, and this HP, Intel, Yahoo! Cloud Computing Test Bed are a natural extension of our ongoing, mutually beneficial partnerships with the research community, such as the Universal Parallel Computing Research Centers,” said Andrew A. Chien, vice president and director of Intel Research.

IDA is also excited about the opportunities this will create for their country, Singapore. They’ve hope to use this test bed and its partnerships to train local students and professionals on subjects regarding cloud computing.

“Cloud computing is considered by many to be the next paradigm shift in computer technology, and this may be the next ‘platform’ for innovative ecosystems. Partnerships like this will allow Singapore to leverage this new paradigm for greater economic and social growth,” said Khoong Hock Yun, assistant chief executive of the Infrastructure Development Group at the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore.

This is a wonderful opportunity for companies interested in cloud computing and web applications to learn and improve on this rising technology. I’m actually a little surprised that Amazon and Apple haven’t jumped in as well. Given their recent problems with S3 and MobileMe, they probably have the most to gain from participating in this research project.

Related:

Entry was posted on Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 at 7:27 pm under Internet, Technology.

Read more entries by TJ Kirchner.
Stumble It!