Cloud computing and services science

This book is essentially a collection of the best papers of the International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science (CLOSER), which was held in Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands on May 7–9, 2011. The conference addressed technology trends in the domain of cloud computing in relation to a broad scientific understanding of modern services emerging from services science, and stimulated dissemination of recent research results among professionals and scholars. Emerging enterprise technologies are profoundly changing the way we think about IT—from economics and efficiency to process and usage models. Many organizations see “externalised‿ IT systems and services as a potential cost-savings advantage by moving internally hosted IT services to external providers. Other organisations view the “external‿ IT as potential disaster recovery systems or as on-demand capacity to boost business continuity and customer service levels. A closer look is necessary to discern what these emerging enterprise technologies are and how they can catalyse creativity and produce a competitive advantage. There is a new wave of interest in “Externalization of IT‿, including anything as a service—such as Software as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service, On Demand delivery, Outsourcing, etc. This emerging facilitation and way of using services through IT is what we refer to as cloud computing.