Essay About  Cost Efficiency And Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing
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In the civilian domain, cloud computing has demonstrated substantial benefits in development
and maintenance of software applications. To date, the cloud computing paradigm has not been
effectively exploited in embedded military applications, for reasons related to performance and
correctness constraints. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) is requesting information on techniques through which
the benefits of cloud computing can be obtained for embedded military systems.
PROBLEM DEFINITION
By “cloud computing” we mean the use of a pool of computing resources – interconnected
processors, memory, storage, input/output, and support software – to execute applications, when
the applications are minimally specific to the particular resources in use.
By “embedded military applications,” we mean computing hardware and software that is part of
a larger system with a specific military purpose. Hence the computing clouds of interest are not
general purpose resources with which unknown users may execute unforeseen applications. Most
embedded applications are not connected to the Internet. Examples of embedded military
applications include command and control of a submarine, in-field data or information analysis,
and image data processing on board an unmanned aerial vehicle.
The anticipated benefits of using cloud computing in embedded military applications include:
 Cost efficiency: Recurring and non-recurring costs may be decreased.
 Manufacturing agility: The time to design, implement, and deploy embedded systems
may be reduced.
 Reliability: Use of pooled resources may remove single points of failure.
 Maintainability: System maintenance costs may be reduced since fewer unique systems
are maintained. Upgrading both hardware and software may be facilitated by the reduced
dependencies among system components.
 Democratization: Since arcane optimization skills are less useful on cloud platforms,