An Exploratory Study of Cloud and Ubiquitous Computing Systems

ENGLISH/ ABSTRACT (ENGLISH/ ABSTRACT (ENGLISH/ ABSTRACT (ENGLISH/ ANGLAIS To investigate the similarities and differences between cloud and ubiquitous comp uting systems, we carried out an exploratory study on the two computing paradigms. Cloud computing provides the next generation of internet based, highly scalable distributed computing systems in which computational resources are offered as a service. It is a new computational model that enables convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. However, ubiquitous computing refers to a scenario in which computing is omnipresent, and particularly in which devices that do not look like computers are endowed with computing capabilities. The idea behind ubiquitous computing is to surround ourselves with computers and software that are carefully tuned to offer us unobtrusive assistance as we navigate through work and personal lives. Emerging computing paradigms including cluster computing, grid computing, ubiquitous computing and cloud computing, amongst others have being misunderstood by most users of these services and researchers as meaning the same. To provide a well-articulated understanding of cloud and ubiquitous computing, certain comparative measures of these computing paradigms are reviewed. The comparative evaluation metrics used include cost, scalability, security/data protection, storage/speed, mobility and context-awareness. The findings of the study revealed that cloud and ubiquitous systems vary based on these comparative metrics