Perspectives on cloud computing: interviews with five leading scientists from the cloud community

Cloud computing is currently one of the major topics in dis- tributed systems, with large numbers of papers being writ- ten on the topic, with major players in the industry releasing a range of software platforms offering novel Internet-based services and, most importantly, evidence of real impact on end user communities in terms of approaches to provision- ing software services. Cloud computing though is at a for- mative stage, with a lot of hype surrounding the area, and this makes it difficult to see the true contribution and impact of the topic.

Cloud computing is a central topic for the Journal of In- ternet Services and Applications (JISA) and indeed the most downloaded paper from the first year of JISA is concerned with the state-of-the-art and research challenges related to cloud computing [1]. The Editors-in-Chief, Fabio Kon and Gordon Blair, therefore felt it was timely to seek clarifica- tion on the key issues around cloud computing and hence invited five leading scientists from industrial organizations central to cloud computing to answer a series of questions on the topic.

The five scientists taking part are: • Walfredo Cirne, from Google’s infrastructure group in California, USA • Dejan Milojicic, Senior Researcher and Director of the Open Cirrus Cloud Computing testbed at HP Labs • Raghu Ramakrishnan, Chief Scientist for Search and Cloud Platforms at Yahoo! • Dan Reed, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President for Tech- nology Strategy and Policy and Extreme Computing • Dilma Silva, researcher at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, in New York