HP, Intel and Yahoo have announced that four organisations are to join the existing group already participating in Open Cirrus, the global open-source test bed organised to fuel advancements in cloud computing research.
Cloud computing test bed
These four organisations--Georgia Tech University's Center for Experimental Research in Computer Systems (CERCS), China Telecom Corporation, the China Mobile Research Institute (CMRI), and the Supercomputing Center of Galicia (CESGA)--have brought the number of locations participating in Open Cirrus to 14, thus making Open Cirrus the most widespread and diverse cloud computing test bed.
They join established Open Cirrus sites such as the centres of excellence at Yahoo, HP and Intel, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, Carnegie Mellon University, the Steinbuch Center for Computing of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, and the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Open Cirrus simulates a real-life, global environment to give researchers an unprecedented opportunity to accurately test applications and measure infrastructure and service performance. To this end, Open Cirrus was launched in July 2008 to counter a major barrier to innovation in the cloud-computing front--the difficulty of providing R&D professionals and organisations with access to cutting-edge cloud-computing resources--as well as related financial and logistical barriers.
Open collaboration
While the adoption of cloud computing itself can help significantly reduce costs for adopters and can allow users to use powerful applications on more devices, developing advancements has proven complex. Open Cirrus contributes significantly to furthering the cloud computing cause via its promotion of open collaboration between partners.
More than 80 ongoing research projects are currently being carried out under Open Cirrus. For example, Carnegie Mellon University is using Open Cirrus, in collaboration with Intel, on stem cell research to facilitate improvements in drug discovery, regenerative medicine and tissue engineering.
HP is utilising Open Cirrus to construct a Cloud Sustainability Dashboard to evaluate and comprehend cloud computing's sustainability impact. Lastly, Yahoo uses Open Cirrus to bolster a range of computer science research, such as natural language processing and web-scale machine learning.