Fall 2005 - Fall 2009

The term "cloud" has long been used as a metaphor for the Internet. Servers connected to the cloud provide data and/or computing services to authorized clients using standard protocols. The cloud conceals a complex infrastructure which makes it relatively easy to develop clients and the server applications that can be deployed anywhere geographically with high availability.

Cloud computing is a natural evolution of network computing, and encompasses many broad computing paradigms: distributed, grid, utility, on-demand, open source; Web services; P2P; Web 2.0 infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), software as a service (SaaS). Cloud computing is a paradigm of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet.

This is a variable-unit, advanced, hands-on course. Lectures will cover the foundations of network computing and protocols and developing cloud computing applications. We will study and research existing cloud computing and storage infrastructures, such as Amazon's storage (S3) and computing (EC2, EBS) platforms, as well as UCSB's open-source software infrastructure for implementing "cloud computing" on clusters, Eucalyptus. Guest speakers from industry and academia will cover various topics and technologies in the field.

Each student will work on a research paper or project and will receive 4-6 units based on the extent of work. Auditors will earn 1-2 units based on participation in class.