Cloud systems are still bit cloudy….

It looks like when people refer to or talk about Cloud systems, most of them have different conceptions and perspectives.

Some users think that Cloud is a black box consisting of several computing systems that host their data and makes it available through web and their smartphone applications.

Some developers think the Cloud as a solution for avoiding the setup and maintenance of back-end systems while they can focus on developing and deploying applications that can scale.

Some researchers think of the Cloud as a huge computational engine with great memory and cpu resources that can be used to handle bid data mining and process parallelization.

But what about IoT users and developers? What is the Cloud for the IoT? Is it just data repositories where people can share sensor readings? IoT needs Cloud both for data storage, service provision (APIs for retrieving information, exchanging data, etc.) and power computing (big data mining). Cloud is the glue between applications, data, networks, embedded devices and their resources. It can be both private and public, allowing users to control access to their data. It can be both a service provider like Cosm where people can share data, but it also can be like iCloud that synchronises contacts, preferences and more, between several devices. Sure, Internet of Things will not succeed if we build independent Cloud silos: things will need to exchange information about data and users, but we can do this in a controlled manner that will respect user privacy!


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