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Cloud Computing in Taiwan William Cheng-Chung Chu and Chao-Tung Yang, Tunghai University, Taiwan Chih-Wei Lu, Chih-Hung Chang, and Juei-Nan Chen, Hsiuping University of Science and Technology, Taiwan Pao-Ann Hsiung, National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan Hahn-Ming Lee, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan
Cloud computing is changing the computing environment: scalable, virtualized resources are increasingly provided as services over the Internet. Taiwan is also changing, transforming itself from a hardware manufacturing island into a cloud village offering both services and resources.
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loud computing is increasingly popular,1,2 and it is changing the face of computing altogether. In cloud computing, which offers tremendous opportunities even as it poses major challenges, resources that are both dynamically scalable and virtualized are today provided routinely as services over the Internet.3,4 Taiwan is now confronting this shift in computing. For the past two decades, the country has flourished as an information and communications technology (ICT) manufacturing island, with several ICT hardware products having achieved market-leader status worldwide. Taiwan’s goal, however, is to transform itself from an ICT island into a cloud village. In 2009, the government initiated the Cloud Computing Industry Development Program (CCIDP)—which extended the country’s earlier E-Taiwan (electronic), M-Taiwan (mobile), and I-Taiwan (intelligent) projects that addressed different aspects of Taiwan’s communication infrastructure—to promote cloud computing from the standpoints of supply, demand, and management.
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Taiwan has integrated multiple resources—representing government, industry, academia, and research—to initiate strong incentive programs for developing cloud computing. Building on a solid foundation in ICT hardware manufacturing, Taiwan has been successfully migrating from the production of component products, such as servers and storage facilities, to the green cloud datacenter total solution, characterized by energy efficiency, and cloud storage.5-7 Due to Taiwan’s relatively weak software industry, in contrast to its hardware industry, Taiwan has made significant use of open source software (OSS) in developing cloud computing systems.
FROM AN ICT ISLAND TO A CLOUD VILLAGE As Figure 1 shows, Taiwan has initiated several projects over the past 10 years to develop its ICT infrastructure and begin the transition to cloud computing. Collectively, the projects have boosted industrial competitiveness, upgraded government performance and efficiency, and generally transformed Taiwan into an electronics leader in Asia, with comprehensive communications consisting of wired, wireless, mobile, and broadband networks. The CCIDP—established in 2009 to promote Taiwan’s development of cloud computing technologies, applications, solutions, and services—has spawned several initiatives for cloud computing. For example, the government cloud (G-cloud) provides efficient government services offering incentive programs for small and medium-sized software enterprises to migrate their ICT platforms to cloud computing, and enhances the IT industry’s competitiveness with high-
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Taiwan cloud village
6 Oct. 2011: CHT launched HiCloud Mall for SaaS 1 Sept. 2011: CHT launched HiCloud CaaS on-demand service July 2011: MOE cloud project for courseware design 3 May 2011: Ill anounced CAFÉ solution 29 Apr. 2011: ITRI introduced Cloud OS 1.0 Apr. 2011: MOEA cloud proposed for enterprise took place
3 Sept. 2010: Executive Yuan formed Steering Committee for Development of Cloud Computing Industry 7 July 2010: Taiwan Cloud Computing Nov. 2010: NSC cloud projects special track Consortium established program 29 Apr. 2010: Executive Yuan set up Cloud Computing 27 Oct. 2010: Taiwan Cloud Industry Development Plan (CCIDP) Computing Program 9 Apr. 2012: Inventec presented Mobile Data Center became Cloud Computing Apr. 2010: CHT introduced HiCloud CaaS and StaaS Association in Taiwan 15 Sept. 2009: Forum of Cloud Computing Development Strategy Dec. 2008: Executive Yuan set up I-Taiwan program (2009-2012) June 2004: Executive Yuan set up M-Taiwan program (2004-2011) May 2002: Executive Yuan set up E-Taiwan program (2002-2008) Mar. 2011: CHT proposed HiCloud CaaS industryacademia cooperation initiative
Taiwan
Legend CaaS: compute as a service CAFÉ: Cloud Appliance for Enterprise CHT: Changwha Telecom Executive Yuan: Republic of China government's executive branch III: Institute for Information Industry ITRI: Industrial Technology Research Institute
MOE: Ministry of Education MOEA: Ministry of Economic Affairs NCHC: National Center for High-Performance Computing NSC: National Science Council SaaS: software as a service StaaS: storage as a service
Figure 1. Major initiatives, both government-sponsored projects and projects initiated by industry, in Taiwan’s cloud computing evolution. In addition, the Taiwan Cloud Computing Association was established to integrate the resources from government, industry, and academia to promote cloud computing more effectively. (Data source: www.cht.com.tw, website for Chungwha Telecom, Taiwan’s leading telecom service provider.)
value-added, integrated cloud computing services. As part of G-cloud, the Taiwan Ministry of Finance uses cloud services to issue electronic invoices, which improves the efficiency of tax revenue collection and eliminates the use of paper required to print more than 10 billion invoices each year. Finally, CCIDP has promoted the development of education cloud services, which has effectively reduced the country’s urban-rural divide by rapidly circulating educational digital content and applications regardless of a school’s geographical location. Cloud computing integrates three layers of services: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS). The Taiwan Cloud Computing Association, which involves all of the country’s major cloud computing players from government, industry,
and academia, has been formed to foster collaboration and integration among service providers and to coordinate domestic and international cloud computing alliances. Taiwan’s National Science Council has also allocated extra funding to support cloud computing and OSS-based technologies research. From the standpoint of human resources, Taiwan’s Ministry of Education has provided extra funding to further the training of cloud computing engineers—it has, for example, provided funding to 40 universities to add cloud computing and service courses to their syllabi. The ministry has also collaborated with governmentfunded research organization and enterprises such as the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) cloud computing center, and companies such as Quanta Computer, Delta Electronics, and T-Cloud Computing to
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NVR, storage Ubiquitous Detector Smart bike guider IP cam Animal husbandry Farming Safety Alarm tracer and disaster and Intelligent NextGen prevention Farm product tag leisure security system broadband MID Smart user interface Smart Comfort and controller convenience MEMS
Sensor networks
Portable color e-paper Smart card
Robot Smart town
Mobile HL7 Healthcare
i-City Digital TV
Intelligent park
Intelligent traffic Car PC management m-RFID Smart ticket
LBS
Smart assistant IEEE 1451 sensor Body access device
Monitoring device Energy Smart HAC sustainability Smart lighting Smart appliances LED substitute energy
Figure 2. Scope of i236 project. (Source: i236 Smart Living Technology and Service Program; www.i236.org.tw.)
offer these universities a cloud computing experimental environment. Additionally, the Ministry of Economic Affairs has offered funding and guidance to support enterprises moving into cloud computing services. More than 600 small and medium-sized enterprises have moved their ICT services to cloud computing. To promote innovation and creativity, the I-Taiwan i236 project—a smart-living technology and service program—has been designed to integrate the resources of government and industry. The project’s goal is primarily to foster cloud service companies’ ability to experiment with their creative and innovative services, such as energy sustainability and intelligent traffic management, in two types of living zones—a smart town and an intelligent park—and then to apply successful services to markets worldwide. A second i236 goal is to encourage traditional non-IT enterprises to apply ICT technology to increase their competiveness. Essentially, the purpose of i236 is to maximize Taiwan’s industrial global competitiveness. As Figure 2 shows, researchers will develop system solutions with emerging technology using three communication networks—next-generation broadband, digital TV, and sensor network—with innovative and sustainable service and business models for six applications: •• •• •• ••
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safety and disaster prevention, healthcare, energy sustainability, intelligent traffic management,
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•• ••
comfort and convenience, and farming and leisure applications.
Currently, two smart-town zones, at Taichung City’s Precision Machinery Innovation Technology Park and Kaohsiung Linhai Industrial Park, feature comfort, convenience, farming, and leisure applications; the zones provide these services to about 200,000 people. More than one million people can now enjoy safety, disaster prevention, healthcare, energy sustainability, and intelligent traffic management services in intelligent park zones in four cities: Taipei, Nantou, Yilan, and Kaohsiung. As Figure 3 shows, Taiwan has numerous projects designed to extend its IT hardware manufacturing capacity through cloud computing’s IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS layers. Many of these OSS-based solutions focus on supporting enterprise cloud computing. Key strategies include, for example, mobile green cloud datacenter solutions and plug-and-play storage appliances. To clarify the categories of the applications in each layer, the services for IaaS are classified into two domains: storage services and computing services. There are also two domains for PaaS—tool platform services and environment platform services; and two domains for SaaS—cross-industry software services and industry software services. For example, ASUS WebStorage is a cloud storage service that helps users back up data, sync files between devices, and share data with friends—it is therefore labeled in Figure 3 as an I-A business service.
INFRASTRUCTURE AS A SERVICE (IAAS)
• G2G, G2B, G2B2B, G2C (S-A) • Chunghwa Telecom: CRM, education (S-B) • eSOON: EZiPCC (S-B) • Furtune: Office equipment services (S-B) Executive Yuan: G-cloud (P-B) • SYSCOM: Quality control (S-A&B) Quanta Computer: Enterprise • Quanta Computer: Manufacturer (S-A) cloud platform (P-B) • Wistron: Medical (S-B) TCloud: CAP (P-B) • Gjun: Training (S-B) Transtep: XDNA (P-A) Lancer Systems: SOA-ERP (S-A) (S-B) (P-A) Cross-industry Industry software software (P-A) (P-B) service service Tools Environment platform platform SaaS service service
In cloud computing, the IaaS layer delivers a computer infrastructure—typically, a platform • virtualization environment—as • • Acer eDC: ITIL (I-A) a service, along with raw stor• ASUS: WebStorage (I-A) • age and networking capability. • Delta: Intelligent mobile • Consumers are provided with datacenter (I-A) • • Chunghwa Telecom: processing, storage, network, and HiCloud (I-B) other fundamental computing re• Trend Micro: Cloud sources enabling them to deploy antivirus (I-B) • TCloud: Elaster (I-B) and run operating system and application software. (I-A) (I-B) One of Taiwan’s early IaaS iniStorage Computing PaaS service service tiatives was the 2004 M-Taiwan (mobile) project. The first goal was IaaS to enhance the Taiwan broadband infrastructure by constructing wired broadband networks, and building fibe-to-the-home (FTTH) Taiwan IT hardware manufacturing capacity pipelines and wireless communication networks using WiMAX Figure 3. Taiwan’s IT manufacturing capacity for cloud computing. technologies. The second goal was to sponsor and promote development of creative, innovative mobile applications and without support from other software suppliers. services. The Taiwan government has encouraged relevant Compared with traditional operating systems such manufacturers and organizations to work together with as Microsoft Windows and Linux, Cloud OS operates at related academic institutions to develop WiMAX standards a higher level of abstraction in which the datacenter is and products, which are now available in most of Taiwan’s considered a resource to be managed. It can tightly inmetropolitan areas. tegrate data storage, computing resources, security, and To leverage IaaS advantages, in 2011 Taiwan’s Chungsystem/network management. Moreover, Cloud OS prohwa Telecom (CHT) set up the Cloud Server Operator vides the physical server with application failover and load Center, the Cloud Computer Testing Center, the Cloud Combalancing. By leveraging virtualization techniques, it uses puter Research Center, and the Cloud Service Experience hardware resources more efficiently and makes their manCenter. CHT has also released HiCloud CaaS (compute as agement easier. a service), an IaaS program that includes features such as Cloud OS has also integrated various kinds of managemembership management, a secure payment mechanism, ment software. It can simultaneously satisfy tangible and quality control, searching, and real-time customer service. virtual resource requirements. CCMA emphasizes the deConsequently, HiCloud CaaS has become a major IaaS comvelopment of a high-flexibility information center in both ponent for most of Taiwan’s domestic software-as-a-service software and hardware technologies, which are key factors (SaaS) providers, some of whom originally used the IaaS in the emerging cloud data service delivery model. components provided by Microsoft and Amazon. Another IaaS project in Taiwan is the green cloud total In 2009, the ITRI established the Cloud Computing Center solution that the Institute for Information Industry recently for Mobile Applications. CCMA’s goal is to enable Taiwan to announced. In 2011, III released the design of CAFÉ-CAKE, build datacenters that can be used anywhere in the world. which is a combination cloud appliance and operating The cloud operating system (Cloud OS) that CCMA developed system. is an end-to-end software stack running cloud applications CAFÉ, the Cloud Appliance for Enterprise, supports and operating a cloud center. It is designed to convert physiusers in building a private cloud of cabinet systems for the cal datacenters into IaaS to support Amazon Web services small and medium-sized enterprise market. CAFÉ facilisuch as those on a commodity hardware platform. tates multiple uses of a PC, blade chassis, or rack cabinet. Cloud OS can multiplex virtual datacenters on a physical The CAFÉ operating system is CAKE—the Cloud Appliance datacenter. By using Cloud OS, a cloud center operator can Kernel Environment. CAKE is an open-source-based and provide different types of IaaS, such as a virtual datacenter, full-Chinese-language software system.
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C OV ER F E AT U RE The underlying design concept is the kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) hypervisor, which supports virtualization management capabilities: for example, the administrator can set the VM’s policy management. That is, when the load is high, CAKE will generate a new VM on a different computing node for better performance and load balancing; when the load is low, however, CAKE will enable the migration of VMs to another physical server, which turns off unnecessary machine operation to conserve energy. CAFÉ-CAKE therefore offers attractive choices of green total solutions for enterprise cloud computing. Taiwan’s Quanta Computer is developing a mini-cloud plan to support cloud computing and academic research. Quanta is collaborating with the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT in building TParty, a platform for an integrated virtual computing environment (www.csail.mit.edu/node/1619). In addition to greatly expanding the lab’s available storage and computing power, the mini-cloud will allow researchers to advance groundbreaking research in a variety of areas.
The intelligent-module datacenter concept emphasizes modulation, flexibility, high power effectiveness, integration, and manageability.
Quanta’s design concept is a “pod design approach,” a well-integrated cloud application that offers the lowest total cost of ownership by using commodity hardware, delivers green performance, is easy to manage, and supports fast deployment. Delta Electronics is also focusing on the IaaS aspect of cloud computing. Delta provides a solution that integrates 480 servers with 7,680 CPU cores, power supply units, and air controllers into a standard container. The cloud datacenter contains 60 terabytes of main memory and 2.88 petabytes of storage space, and it can support 200,000 VMs. To provide a total solution, Delta proposes an intelligent module datacenter that includes a power-supporting, intelligent computer cabinet and management system. The intelligent-module datacenter concept emphasizes modulation, flexibility, high power effectiveness, integration, and manageability. Taiwanese companies have also developed storage and security IaaS platforms. Acer, for example, has announced its entrance into cloud computing with AcerCloud, an application that securely connects all personal smart devices for anytime, anywhere access. AcerCloud will synchronize both media libraries and documents across connected
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products, including smartphones and tablets. The application will support Android at launch, with Acer promising compatibility with Windows-based devices in the future— AcerCloud was officially introduced to the market in January, and the service is scheduled to be available in the second quarter of 2012. Acer’s Always Connect technology serves as a major backbone of AcerCloud, making it possible to retrieve files from Acer PCs even in hibernation mode. Further, the service combines local and cloud storage to ensure that files are available locally when needed. ASUS provides ASUS Cloud, a cloud storage service that supports cross-device, cross-platform, and alwaysaccessible storage. Users can automatically upload files to ASUS Cloud with their device of choice—cell phone, tablet, notebook, or home computer—from wherever they are. In addition, users can upload files to several devices all at one time. On the software side of cloud computing, various companies are taking different approaches. Foxconn Group, for example, is planning to construct two buildings on a 4.57acre site in southern Taiwan’s Kaohsiung Software Park, allowing the company to expand into cloud computing and software development. The new push into software development and cloud computing reflects the company’s effort to diversify and attract new customers from India and other countries where software development is a highgrowth industry. Both Google and Microsoft are considering Taiwan’s advanced information technologies, supporting its plans to enhance the development of resources, robust infrastructure, reliable power supply, and first-class technical staff. Google, for instance, announced in 2011 that, in the next year or two, it will establish a datacenter in central Taiwan, for which it has already purchased the land. Also in 2011, Microsoft signed a cooperation memorandum with Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs to set up a cloud computing technology research center in Taiwan. As Microsoft’s first major cloud computing technology research center in Asia, this new project is expected to combine the global electronics production chain built by Taiwanese original design manufacturers (ODMs) and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), including Quanta and Foxconn, and thereby help them develop devices and cloud computing services. In the research arena, the research group at Tunghai University has integrated both KVM and OpenNebula open source software to implement the Tunghai Cloud IaaS environment.8 The user-friendly Web interfaces minimize the complexity of cloud resource management and access. Furthermore, researchers have proposed green power management for load balancing VMs in the cloud.9 Our green power approach has three phrases: it supports a green mechanism for power efficiency, implements a
PLATFORM AS A SERVICE (PAAS)
Application IDE
App runtime
Elaster CAP SDK
Resource host
VM resource monitor, and allocates resources dynamically. Finally, the Tunghai Cloud IaaS environment features virtualization fault tolerance through the open source Hadoop project. In addition to providing IaaS products and solutions for Taiwan’s domestic cloud computing market, major ICT manufacturers in Taiwan have focused on developing a cost-effective total solution for worldwide IaaS providers, including a mobile green data container for public cloud services and a small cabinet system for small and medium-sized enterprise private cloud solutions.
Application management API M/R jobs
HTML
JSP
MapReduce
Web container
Servlet container
Application management portal
Elaster CAP API Search engine
Relational DB (MySQL)
Big-data storage
Other …
System administration command line interface
Workload optimization engine (WOE)
Operating system (Linux Fedora 12)
Infrastructure service (virtual machine or physical machine)
PaaS provides a running software stack, usually Figure 4. Elaster cloud computing architecture. Elaster CAP’s solution pack includes a containing proprietary software development kit (SDK), API library, Eclipse plug-in for an integrated development programming interfaces environment (IDE), command line and script for non-GUI development, and a stand-alone or APIs for developing and runtime environment. (Source: TCloud Computing; www.tcloudcomputing.com) running applications. Consumers can deploy onto the cloud infrastructure applications they have created Trend Micro, is a cloud-enabled software maker, dedicated or acquired using programming languages and tools supto development of the open source Elaster CAP (cloud apported by the respective provider (in some cases, PaaS plication platform). As Figure 4 shows, Elaster CAP is a might require customers to develop applications using solution for the development, deployment, management, specific service provider APIs). Consumers do not manage and monitoring of cloud-based applications. Elaster CAP or control the underlying cloud infrastructure, including aims to provide an alternative PaaS choice for cloud comnetworks, servers, operating systems, or storage, but they puting developments and applications in the Asia market. do control the deployed applications and, depending on One notable project, sponsored by the Taiwan National usage requirements, they can control application hosting Science Council (NSC), is a cloud computing middleware environment configurations. product. Based on the service-oriented architecture, this In the cloud computing architecture, the PaaS layer product employs agent technology to monitor quality-ofconnects and integrates both the IaaS and the SaaS. service requirements and service-level agreements and to Accomplishing this, however, generally requires sigdynamically analyze resource allocations and deployment. nificant effort by many software engineers. Compared The middleware’s purpose is to provide complete transparto its flourishing development for IaaS, which stemmed ency of the underlying technology and the surrounding from Taiwan’s strong ICT manufacturing industry, PaaS environment, and to afford an easy, cost-effective, secure research in Taiwan is less advanced, bounded by a lack of way to access services from the cloud environment. resources and support for software development environTaiwan’s National Center for High-Performance Comments and platforms. puting has also built a PaaS platform with Hadoop. NCHC Despite the weaker development of PaaS technologies selected Hadoop because its MapReduce program can and solutions in Taiwan, several interesting projects have store and process vast amounts of data in parallel based emerged. For example, TCloud Computing, a subsidiary of on large clusters built from commodity hardware. This
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C OV ER F E AT U RE configuration settings, the customer need not manage the underlying cloud infrastructure— network, servers, operating systems, storage, or even individual application capabilities. HTTP DNS FTP Several examples of successful SaaS cloud Incident trigger Correlation computing have emerged in Taiwan, resulting Monitor Correlation from government and industry coordination Clustering Analyzer Clawer MapReduce Data processing of strategies, programs, research, and inData archive Tracking system Hadoop (HBASE/metadata) vestment. Farglory Group, for example, is a Message routing framework Hadoop (HDFS) Infrastructure development and construction firm that has Virtualization collaborated with Chunghwa Telecom on OS … U-Town, a smart-building project. The smart Server farm building is equipped with dual-fiber backbone and embedded with FTTO-ready facilities. Figure 5. Trend Micro’s SecureCloud. The SecureCloud environment upU-Town provides cloud-based customgrades the antivirus and antihacking services from individual analysis ized building automation services offering and aggregation to real-time cross-analysis and intelligence. (Source: integrated management for energy, parking, Trend Micro; http://trendmicro.com) security, data storage, entertainment, and so on. Through this cloud computing resource platform can add and remove MapReduce computing rointegration, U-Town offers its customers—the enterprises bustness and storage resources without shutting down the and individuals that are moving in and using the town’s entire system. add-on services—a low-cost, effective enterprise automaTo develop PaaS while pursuing the Chinese-languagetion investment. based market, Taiwan has signed an Economic Cooperation Another example is Trend Micro’s SecureCloud, shown Framework Agreement with the People’s Republic of China in Figure 5. A VMware vCloud environment offering data (mainland China) and the Republic of China (Taiwan). This protection and encryption key management, SecureCloud cross-strait agreement includes a plan to develop more is intended for use in virtualized environments in which than one OSS-based PaaS. Leading Taiwan cloud computthe VMware vCloud Director manages private cClouds. ing technology companies and organizations—such as Some developers are migrating existing applications to Trend Micro, TCloud Computing, CHT, ITRI, NCHC, and III— the cloud environment, and others are creating new SaaS are cooperating with the Beijing cloud computing center to applications, such as for mobile devices on the Apple iOS create a smart-city demonstration in Greater China. These and the Android platforms. PaaSs can support the Chinese economic community in Creating high-value-added SaaS applications and the development of cloud computing services, as well as moving from product-oriented to service-oriented procreate many opportunities for both sides. visioning, as well as supporting a pay-as-you-go or In Taiwan, with more than 1.2 million small and pay-as-you-use business model, are well-accepted conmedium-sized enterprises, which includes nearly 98 percepts in Taiwan. Taiwanese IT companies should focus on cent of all Taiwanese businesses, it is more difficult to innovative application services and initiating particular develop PaaS than IaaS and SaaS because of the lack of business models in SaaS to strengthen cloud computing’s exclusive and complete ICT resources. Taiwan has realcompetitive advantages. Most SaaS providers have focused ized that, to develop its own PaaS, the country needs to on their Taiwan market, and their next step will aim at the collaborate with international PaaS players such as Google international market, especially China. App Engine (GAE) and Microsoft Azure, as well as take advantage of existing OSS-based PaaSs. Another important OSS-BASED CLOUD COMPUTING SYSTEMS issue for Taiwan’s PaaS development is interoperability Because it encourages open innovation and global conacross different platforms, which might require redefining tributions, OSS has been an important resource to speed standard interfaces. up cloud computing development. Accordingly, NSC has launched projects specifically to promote open innovation SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE (SAAS) and software development. With the SaaS cloud computing layer, customers use the To ensure OSS quality and documentation, NSC has provider’s applications running on a cloud infrastructure. required that the projects and their implementation, as The applications are accessible from various client devices well as all associated documentation, follow the Capability through a thin-client interface such as a Web browser. With Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) approach. NSC projects the possible exception of limited user-specific application address different issues in cloud computing and provide a cing Proactive sour g User traffic lo
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Customer Customer
variety of tools and technoloTable 1. Open source software and applications used by Taiwan cloud computing developers. gies, which collaboratively Cloud computing layer Representative open source software and applications enhance the cloud system design, specifically, its secuInfrastructure as a service CloudOS, CAFÉ-CAKE, KVM, Xen, OpenVZ, Virtualbox, OpenNebula, (IaaS) OpenSTACK, OpenQRM, Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC), Eculyptus, rity via testing services. FreeNAS, Nimbus, Ceph To support open innovaPlatform as a service (PaaS) Hadoop, Hadoop4Win, DRBL-Hadoop, OpenNode, AppScale, Cloudera, tion, NSC has collaborated Google App Engine (GAE), Facebook App Platform, Cloud Foundry, JBoss w it h t he Open S ou rce Software as a service (SaaS) eyeOS, Nutch, Crawlzilla, COSA, OpenERP, Vtiger CRM, OwnCloud Software Foundry (OpenFoundry; www.citi.sinica. 3% edu.tw/research_projects/open_sourceev.html) of Taiwan’s 14 % Academia Sinica (www.sinica.edu.tw/main_e.shtml) to provide a platform for use as a software development environment. The platform supports both software downloads 15 % and communication for research and cooperation with geographically distant corporations and academics. As of 2011, this initiative has supported 30 cloud computing projects. 68 % OSS has had a major impact on academic research, industry system development, and government projects Don’t use at all in Taiwan. Table 1 shows the most popular open source Use sparingly Use only when commercial support is available software and applications in use by the Taiwan cloud comUse whenever possible puting community. The openness and availability of OSS has created opportunities for researchers and industry to Figure 6. Results derived from the Cloud.com survey quesconduct experiments or develop cloud computing techtion, “What is your organization’s stance on using open nologies and systems easily and cost-effectively. Adapting source software?” More than two-thirds of respondents the most popular OSS can also increase the interoperabiluse OSS whenever possible. ity and contribute to setting common standards for cloud computing platforms. Taiwan’s research organizations have initiated many COSA (Cloud Object Storage Appliance),10 developed by open source projects for cloud computing systems (http:// Taiwan’s Institute for Information Industry, is a document trac.nchc.org.tw/cloud). Particularly notable is ITRI’s object management system for small and medium-sized Cloud OS, the first large-scale cloud computing operating businesses. Its features include document object manipusystem that has integrated different kinds of managelation and management, synchronization among different ment software. Cloud OS can simultaneously satisfy client devices, sharing among users, and access support both tangible and virtual resource requirements, provide for heterogeneous devices. databank services, and establish security management NCHC has built cloud computing platforms using mechanisms. With Cloud OS, users can instantly switch several OSS applications, including Crawlzilla, DRBLto different network and carrier functions between public Hadoop, and Hadoop4Win. Crawlzilla is a cluster-based and confidential platforms, reducing companies’ cost and search engine support tool. DRBL-Hadoop enables eliminating the difficulty of integrating different software massive deployment of Hadoop Cluster software. applications. Moreover, Cloud OS enables high-quality Hadoop4Win is an education platform that runs a disservices comparable to IaaS, similar to the offerings from tributed file system on the Microsoft Windows operating companies such as Amazon. system. CAFÉ-CAKE includes technology for delivering WinCloud.com conducted a survey in the second quarter dows and Linux applications as well as Web applications of 2011 to determine cloud computing usage trends. The to the desktop through a unified, user-friendly interface. survey results show that open source use is pervasive CAFÉ-CAKE overlaps both IaaS and SaaS and will sigamong cloud computing professional users, with 69 pernificantly reduce the total cost of computing for small to cent using OSS whenever possible, while only 3 percent medium-sized business enterprises, as well as provide a indicated that they do not use OSS at all. Of the 3 percent cost-effective solution for governments, schools, and uniof users who do not use OSS, 58 percent have no cloud versities. These solutions will allow users to access their computing strategy.1 As Figure 6 shows, the results from professional data and applications from most connected this survey clearly indicate the general acceptability of devices and will also provide enhanced security while OSS in cloud computing development and confirm that significantly simplifying data management. it is becoming a major trend.
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C OV ER F E AT U RE In Taiwan’s case, OSS will be a key source for the future development of cloud computing, which not only can speed up technology development but also can, through source code availability, foster the integration of cloud computing services. By using innovative OSS with its selfdeveloped IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS technology, it is possible for Taiwan to develop total solutions for cloud computing, for both domestic and international services.
A
lthough the concept has significant potential, Taiwan still faces many challenges in developing cloud computing services and related technologies. With a strong ICT manufacturing foundation, Taiwan can produce hardware components cost-effectively in its supply chain. Because the ICT market is moving from a product-oriented model to a service-oriented model, however, the profit margin for selling these computer components and devices is shrinking. To successfully make the transition from an ICT island to a cloud village while sustaining its ICT market strength, Taiwan must increase its investment in the software industry and develop high-value-added services. Open source software will continue to be an important resource in developing software applications. Moreover, Taiwan will continue to develop OSS-based IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS systems. The alliance and integration of solution providers to form an effective supply chain of cloud computing services will be another key issue. Finally, Taiwan also needs to promote innovative and creative cloud computing services. By following these recommendations, Taiwan will likely become a cloud village sooner rather than later.
Acknowledgments The work was partially supported by the Taiwan National Science Council under grants NSC-100-2218-E-029-004, NSC100-2218-E-029-005, and NSC-100-2622-E-029-008-CC3.
References 1. 2011 Cloud Computing Outlook Survey Results; www. cloudstack.org/blog/61-2011-cloud-computing-outlooksurvey-results.html. 2. P. Mell and T. Grance, The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing, NIST Special Publication 800-145, Sept. 2011; http:// csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-145/SP800-145. pdf. 3. W.Y. Chang, H. Abu-Amara, and J.F. Sanford, Transforming Enterprise Cloud Services, Springer, 2010. 4. Z. Mahmood and R. Hill, Cloud Computing for Enterprise Architectures, Series: Computer Communications and Networks, Springer, 2011. 5. C.-T. Yang et al., “Implementation of a Smart Grid System with SOA-based Service on Cloud,” Comm. Computer and Information Science, vol. 223, Springer, 2011, pp. 159-168. 6. R.-S. Chang and C.-M. Wu, “Green Virtual Networks for Cloud Computing,” Proc. 5th Int’l ICST Conf. Comm. and Networking in China (ChinaCom 10), IEEE, 2010, pp. 1-7.
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7. J.-M. Chang et al., “An Efficient Service Discovery System for Dual-Stack Cloud File Service,” IEEE Systems J., no. 99, 2011, p.1, doi:10.1109/JSYST.2011.2177131. 8. C.-T. Yang, B.-H. Chen, and W.-S. Chen, “On Implementation of a KVM IaaS with Monitoring System on Cloud Environments,” Comm. Computer and Information Science, vol. 265, Springer, 2011, pp. 300-309. 9. C.-T. Yang et al., “Green Power Management with Dynamic Resource Allocation for Cloud Virtual Machines, Proc. IEEE 13th Int’l Conf. High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC 11), IEEE, pp. 726-733. 10. C.-H. Kuo and S.-T. Liu, “A Prototype System for Object Management in Private Cloud,” Proc. 2011 Int’l Conf. Cloud and Service Computing (CSC 11), IEEE, 2011, pp. 348-353.
William Cheng-Chung Chu is a professor in the Department of Computer Science and the director of the Software Engineering and Technologies Center at Tunghai University, Taiwan. Chu received a PhD in computer science from Northwestern University. He is a member of the IEEE Computer Society. Contact him at
[email protected]. Chao-Tung Yang is a professor of computer science at Tunghai University, Taiwan. Yang received a PhD in computer science from the National Chiao Tung University. He is a member of the IEEE Computer Society and ACM. Contact him at
[email protected]. Chih-Wei Lu is an associate professor and the dean of the College of Informatics, Hsiuping University of Science and Technology, Taiwan. Lu received a PhD in information engineering and computer science from Feng Chia University. Contact him at
[email protected]. Chih-Hung Chang is an associate professor of computer science at Hsiuping University of Science and Technology. Chang received a PhD in computer science from Feng Chia University. He is member of the IEEE Computer Society. Contact him at
[email protected]. Juei-Nan Chen is an assistant professor at Hsiuping University of Science and Technology, Taiwan. Chen received a PhD in engineering science from National Cheng Kung University. Contact him at
[email protected]. Pao-Ann Hsiung is a professor and chairman of the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan. Hsiung received a PhD in electrical engineering from the National Taiwan University. He is a senior member of IEEE and ACM. Contact him at
[email protected]. Hahn-Ming Lee is a full professor in the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan. Lee received a PhD in computer science and information engineering from the National Taiwan University. Contact him at
[email protected].
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