Introduction to Network centric computing and Network centric content. What are the advantages of Network centric computing and content?

Introduction to Network-centric computing

• Information processing can be done more efficiently on large farms of computing and storage systems accessible via the Internet.
• Grid computing – initiated by the National Labs in the early 1990s; targeted primarily at scientific computing.
• Utility computing – initiated in 2005-2006 by IT companies and targeted at enterprise computing.
• Grid computing is distributed system, a large number of loosely coupled, heterogeneous, and geographically dispersed systems in different administrative domains. The term grid computing is a metaphor of electric grid.
• The focus of utility computing is on the business model for providing computing services; it often requires a cloud-like infrastructure.
• Cloud computing is a path to utility computing embraced by major IT companies including: Amazon, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and others.

Network-centric content

• Content: any type or volume of media, be it static or dynamic, monolithic or modular, live or stored, produced by aggregation, or mixed.
• The “Future Internet” will be content centric.
• The creation and consumption of audio and visual content is likely to transform the Internet to support increased quality in terms of resolution, frame rate, color depth, stereoscopic information.

Network-centric computing and content

• Data-intensive:  large scale simulations in science and engineering require large volumes of data. Multimedia streaming transfers large volume of data.
• Network-intensive:  transferring large volumes of data requires high bandwidth networks.
• Low-latency networks for data streaming, parallel computing, computation steering.
• The systems are accessed using thin clients (e.g., Google Chrome OS) running on systems with limited resources, e.g., wireless devices such as smart phones and tablets.
• The infrastructure should support some form of workflow management, i.e., complex computational tasks require coordination of several applications

Advantages of Network-centric computing and content

• Computing and communication resources (CPU cycles, storage, network bandwidth) are shared and resources can be aggregated to support data-intensive applications
• Data sharing facilitates collaborative activities
• Cost reduction: pay as you go model, eliminate initial investment, reduces significantly maintenance and operation costs User convenience and elasticity, accommodate very large peak-to-average ratios