Reaching for sky computing

Sometimes, a single cloud isn’t enough. Sometimes, you need the whole sky.

That’s why a number of researchers are developing tools to federate clouds, an architectural concept dubbed “sky computing” in a paper published in the September/October 2009 issue of IEEE Internet Computing.

“Sky computing is a tongue in cheek term for what happens when you have multiple clouds,” explained Kate Keahey of the University of Chicago, who co-authored the paper alongside University of Florida researchers Mauricio Tsugawa, Andréa Matsunaga, and José Fortes.

“[In the paper] we talked about standards and cloud markets and various mechanics that might lead to sky computing over multiple clouds, and then that idea was picked up by many projects,” Keahey added.

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