Message from the Steering Committee Chairs

Cloud computing is considered by many to be a fundamental transformational processing technology of the 21st century. Cloud computing is impacting societies, governments, and organizations with unparalleled processing and data storage technology needs. It is able to support a wide variety of applications that could not be envisioned just a short few years ago. A set of IEEE/ASM and IFIP conferences has been started, in the recent years, on cloud computing. Academia and the international IT research labs of large companies are focusing their research efforts on various aspects of this very challenging area. The IT industry and SME companies are increasingly using cloud computing as a fast response to market requirements. Cloud computing has important implications for the computer engineering and science research community in the areas of scalability, performance optimization, availability, security, trustworthiness, privacy, and energy reduction. New applications based on cloud computing platforms and services are emerging. These include transportation, wireless and mobile computing, real-time sensor networks, and "green" or energy-aware computing.