Symposium: Cloud and Grid Computing Services: The Next Generation of Software-as-a-Service (Full-day Symposium)
Leaders: Haluk Demirkan,  Alex Bordetsky, Daniel Dolk, Michael Goul

Like electricity, the next big upgrade to your corporate systems department may be something you will use but never see. It could be "cloud computing," the next step in the evolution of software-as-a-service technology. Cloud computing is a term which is used to refer to the use of scalable, real-time, pay-per-use, Internet-based information technology services and resources. It is a general concept that incorporates software as a service, Web 2.0 and other technologies, in which the common theme is reliance on the Internet for satisfying the computing needs of the users.

Cloud computing is often confused with grid computing (a type of distributed computing whereby a super and virtual computer is composed of a cluster of networked, loosely-coupled computers, acting in orchestration to perform very large tasks), utility computing (the packaging of computing resources, such as computation and storage, as a metered service similar to a traditional public utility such as electricity) and autonomic computing (computer systems capable of self-management). Indeed many cloud computing deployments so far depend on grids, have autonomic characteristics and bill like utilities — but cloud computing can be seen as a natural next step from the grid-utility model.

The promise of cloud computing goes far beyond simply providing software updates and dealing with growing server and storage requirements. It has the potential to transform the role of IT within the business. A key benefit is time to market through increased agility and flexibility. These models enable organizations to ramp up capacity within hours and ramp down capacity equally quickly without residual costs. The utility model offers reduced, theoretically zero, fixed cost and lower management costs.

There is a need to apply robust research findings in the appropriate management and technical contexts related to grid and cloud computing. The purpose of this symposium is to investigate this “software-as-a-service” paradigm, review the impact of “utility,” “grid” and “cloud” computing models on federations of enterprises and organizations; investigate its tenets and evaluate relevant approaches to architecture infrastructure, business processes and strategy.

Possible topics of applied, field and empirical research include, but are not limited to:

• Service-based grid/utility/autonomic computing infrastructure designs, approaches and implementations

• Theories and advanced architectural models and processes

• Theories and approaches for integrating organizations to a cloud computing

• Novel management approaches

• Data loss and backups

• Redundancy and bandwidth issues, problems and proposed solutions

• Plug, negotiate and play processes

• Automated service-level agreement negotiation and orchestration

• Exit strategies from the engagements, risk of lock-in

• Theories, challenges and impacts of software-as-a-service

• Types of cloud usage, e.g. sales, accounting, data processing, web hosting

• Data services and data management

• Service security, privacy and trust

• Case studies and applications of grid and cloud computing

Haluk Demirkan (haluk.demirkan@asu.edu) is Assistant Professor of Information Systems at Arizona State University. His main research interests and expertise are in service science, service-oriented information systems, technology and management, and the management of out-tasking and outsourcing relationships. Haluk is the recent recipient of the IBM Faculty Award for a research proposal titled “Design Science for Self Service Systems” in Services Sciences Management and Engineering Discipline, and he is currently co-editing two seminal books with James Spohrer, the well-known founder of the emerging service science, management and engineering field. Dr. Demirkan has presented his research in a number of academic/ industry journals and conferences; such as IEEE Transactions, European Journal of Operations Research, Information Systems and e-Business Management, Information Systems Frontiers, the Communications of the ACM, E-Commerce Research and Applications Journal, AMCIS, HICSS, and DSI. He has authored or co-authored over thirty articles in refereed journals or conference proceedings, and he has served in the services science area as a special issue editor, track and mini-track co-chair and program chair at HICSS, AMCIS and Informs.


Alex Bordetsky (abordets@nps.edu) is Associate Professor of Information Systems at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey. He is also an Associate Chair for Research at the Department of Information Sciences. Professor Bordetsky is Director of the NPS Center for Network Innovation and Experimentation (CENETIX) and Principal Investigator for one of the major research projects at NPS, Tactical Network Topology (TNT) Testbed and Experimentation. Dr. Bordetsky is a recipient of prestigious Robert W. Hamming Interdisciplinary Research Award for his pioneering studies of collaborative technologies and adaptive network-centric environments. His work has been recently featured in the AFCEA SIGNAL Magazine, Via Sat, and the USSOCOM Tip of the Spear Journal. Professor Bordetsky publishes in major IT journals including Information Systems Research, Telecommunication Systems Modeling and Analysis, Command and Control Systems, and International Journal of Mobile Wireless Communications.


Daniel Dolk (drdolk@nps.edu) is Professor of Information Sciences at Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA. His main research work is in the area of modeling environments, particularly with respect to database design, decision support systems, and model integration. Most of this work has involved the extension of database concepts to management science and operations research applications, principally mathematical programming, statistical analysis and discrete event simulation. More recently, Prof. Dolk’s interests have focused upon computational experimentation in the form of agent-based modeling and simulation environments. He has published many articles on these and related, topics in journals such as Information Systems Research, Communications of the ACM, Decision Support Systems, and the European Journal of Operational Research. Prof. Dolk has been the Decision Technologies Track Chair for the Hawaiian International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) for the past 12 years, and is Vice Chairman of the IFIP Working Group 7.6 on Optimization Modeling and Information Systems. He is currently co-editing a book with Dr. Janusz Granat titled Modelling for Decision Support in Network-Based Services.


Michael Goul (Michael.Goul@asu.edu) is a Professor of Information Systems. His recent research interests are in the area of service computing, smart and self-service, and he is working in the area of data, meta-data, data model and master data management services. He has served as journal editor, special issue editor, Association for Information Systems (AIS) Vice President, AIS Conference and Program Chair, and Chair of the AIS special interest group in decision support, knowledge and data management systems (SIGDSS). Dr. Goul recently held a sabbatical appointment as a William J. Clinton Distinguished University Fellow at the newest presidential school – the Clinton School of Public Service, and he the Executive Director of the Teradata University Network.