Research Agenda in Cloud Technologies

Cloud computing is the latest effort in delivering computing resources as a service. It represents a shift away from computing as a product that is purchased, to computing as a service that is delivered to consumers over the internet from large-scale data centres – or “clouds”. Whilst cloud computing is gaining growing popularity in the IT industry, academia appeared to be lagging behind the rapid developments in this field. This paper is the first systematic review of peer-reviewed academic research published in this field, and aims to provide an overview of the swiftly developing advances in the technical foundations of cloud computing and their research efforts. Structured along the technical aspects on the cloud agenda, we discuss lessons from related technologies; advances in the introduction of protocols, interfaces, and standards; techniques for modelling and building clouds; and new use-cases arising through cloud computing.