CTO Roundtable: Cloud Computing: Our panel of experts discuss cloud computing and how companies can make the best use of it.

Abstract

Many people reading about cloud computing in the trade journals will think it’s a panacea for all their IT problems. It is not. In this CTO Roundtable discussion we hope to give practitioners useful advice on how to evaluate cloud computing for their organizations. Our focus will be on the SMB (small- to medium-size business) IT managers who are underfunded, overworked, and have lots of assets tied up in out-of-date hardware and software. To what extent can cloud computing solve their problems? With the help of five current thought leaders in this quickly evolving field, we offer some answers to that question. We explore some of the basic principles behind cloud computing and highlight some of the key issues and opportunities that arise when computing moves from in-house to the cloud. Our sincere thanks to all who participated and to the ACM Professions Board for making this possible.

Index Terms

• Computer systems organization

  • Architectures

    • Distributed architectures

• General and reference

  • Document types

• Software and its engineering

  • Software organization and properties

    • Contextual software domains

      • Operating systems

    • Software system structures

      • Distributed systems organizing principles