Collaborative eResearch in a Social Cloud

Abstract

Abstract-Social networks provide a useful basis for enabling collaboration among groups of individuals. This is applicable not only to social communities but also to the scientific community. Already scientists are leveraging social networking concepts in projects to form groups, share information and communicate with their peers. For scientific projects which require large computing resources, one useful aspect of collaboration is the sharing of computing resources among project members. A social network provides an ideal platform to share these resources. This paper introduces a framework for Social Cloud computing with a view towards collaboration and resource sharing within a scientific community. The architecture of a Social Cloud, where individuals or institutions contribute the capacity of their computing resources by means of Virtual Machines leased through the social network, is outlined. Members of the Social Cloud can contribute, request, and use Virtual Machines from other members, as well as form Virtual Organizations among groups of members.

Trustworthy Distributed Computing on Social Networks

“…Whereas their main realization was still a social storage system as in [51], they also suggested that the same vision can be used to build a distributed computing service as we advocate in this work. Recent realizations of this vision have been reported in [52] and [53]. In [52], Thaufeeg et al devised an architecture where ''individuals or institutions contribute the capacity of their computing resources by means of virtual machines leased through the social network''.…”

“…Recent realizations of this vision have been reported in [52] and [53]. In [52], Thaufeeg et al devised an architecture where ''individuals or institutions contribute the capacity of their computing resources by means of virtual machines leased through the social network''. In [53] Koshy et al further explored the motivations of users to enable social cloud systems for scientific computing.…”

An Optimized Computational Model for Multi-Community-Cloud Social Collaboration

“…The cloud collaboration provides the following benefits for us: 1) simple storage and retrieve [20]; 2) efficient collaboration: allows multiple people to collaborate on content [13]; 3) complex collaboration: offers a complete environment including storage and retrieval, content management, and office productivity applications such as word processing, spreadsheet, presentations, calendaring, and workflow [6], [7]; 4) functional applications: offers functional appli- 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud collaboration cations, e.g., project management; 5) business and social networking: offers the ability for social communities to be formed in addition to simple storage and retrieval of documents [18].…”

Policy Derived Access Rights in the Social Cloud

“…In [3], the authors introduce a framework for the sharing of resources in a social cloud for the scientific community. Their work is built on Facebook, and allows for the sharing of computational resources through Virtual Machines (VM).…”

“…The network of "friends" that are created on these social networks are utilised by Social Clouds [2] to share resources such as information, services and hardware. Social clouds are open and created in an ad-hoc fashion, with resources being contributed and dynamically shared [3]. There are a number of issues that may be identified in these systems:…”