Content about cloud computing

Videos of the week - Cloud computing video contest

The term cloud computing is on everyone's lips. But what, exactly, does it mean?
To help clear up the cloud confusion, cloud solution provider Appirio is offering a meaty cash prize to the best video that can both entertain and explain cloud computing in under two minutes. The grand prize for the top video is $3000 US; the first runner up will receive $1000 US, and four honorable mentions will each get $250 US.
One contestant named Kyle Roche has already broken the two-minute limit with his DataCenter Super Heroes two-part series. In spite of the fact that each episode is five minutes long, the narrative structure and pithy humor make these videos stand out from the crowd of contestants.
Here's some of our favorite entries:

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Feature - How green is my grid?

Image courtesy European Communities, 2009

(Editor’s note: the following is a condensed version of a GridBriefing on Green IT, that was just published on 31 July.)
Climate change is one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century. Across Europe, efforts are being made to reduce energy usage and carbon emissions by 20% by the year 2020. The European Commission has identified Information and Communication technologies (ICTs) as key to accomplishing this. It hopes to cut our carbon footprint all across the economy by harnessing technologies such as virtualization, and by investing in ICT research — which together promise to reduce energy consumption and increase our knowledge of the changing climate.
How green is our ICT? ICT is responsible for 2% of European carbon emissions — a figure equalling that of  the aviation industry — and emissions are expected to increase by 6% per year.However, the biggest savings a

Link of the Week - Gaia

Image courtesy ESA

This week’s Link is the Gaia project — a global space astrometry mission. Its goal is to make the largest, most precise three-dimensional map of our galaxy by surveying an unprecedented number of stars, more than a billion. The data- handling is done with a combination of grid and cloud computing.
Gaia will monitor each of its target stars about 70 times over a five-year period, precisely charting their positions, distances, movements and changes in brightness. It is expected to discover hundreds of thousands of new celestial objects, such as extra-solar planets and failed stars called brown dwarfs. Within our own solar system, Gaia should also identify tens of thousands of asteroids.Additional scientific benefits include detection and characterization of tens of thousands of extra-solar planetary systems, a comprehensive survey of objects ranging from huge numbers of minor bodies in our solar system, through galaxies i

Feature - A side of cloud with your grid, ma’am?

Belle II co-spokesman Masanori Yamauchi (left) with 2008 Nobel prize winner in physics Makoto Kobayashi.Image courtesy of Belle II.

As the cloud becomes a more popular computing solution in the commercial world, it is starting to pique the interest of the academic research community. Collaborators of the Belle II experiment at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization, known as KEK, in Japan are considering supplementing their computing with Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), which provides on-demand, virtual computing resources over the Internet. The KEKB particle accelerator produces a more densely-packed, intense beam than any currently operating collider, and an upgrade to the machine in 2013 is expected to increase the intensity by a factor of 50. The new Belle II detector will come online at the same time equipped to handle the estimated hundred-fold increase in data — expected to total 40 petabytes per

Announcement - Cloud expo Europe 2009: Call for papers Image courtesy of cloudexpoeurope.com  Event: Cloud Expo Europe 2009 Venue: Barbican Centre, London, UK Dates: Expo: 20-21 May 2009White papers and presentations due: 19 March 2009Submission information: Email submissions to maggie at cloudexpoeurope.com Registration Cloud Computing, Linux, Open Source, Unix and Developer knowledge and information, all together in one event. CLOUD EXPO EUROPE will be the only event which will bring together all the above elements in one event under one roof. Situated at the Barbican Centre in the City of London, the event will be the first of its kind and will attract business and IT professionals from some of Europe’s largest financial houses and corporate businesses based not only in the City of London, but also from around the UK and Europe.Many organizations are waking up to the realization that cloud computing and Open Source are driving down the cost of computation, application hosting, content storage and delivery,As ever,