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cloudssuch as public, private and community or specific clouds such
as storage, knowledge, science, data, sensor, device, and mobile),
there abound hordes of real-time and sophisticated applications and
services.
5.3.3.2 Cloud Infrastructures for Real-Time Big Data Analytics Today
the most visible and valuable trend is nonetheless the unprecedented
data explosion in every business domain. As machines and sensors are
pervasively deployed and effectively used and managed for a variety of
requirements in our everyday environments, machine-generated data
are much larger than human-generated data. at is, the data volume
is exponentially growing with a number of remarkable advancements
in the field of sensors, actuators, robots, connectivity, service enable-
ment, and so on. Embedded systems getting networked locally as well
as remotely are the newer attractions. Further, with the data formats
ranging from nonstructured to semistructured and to structured style,
there are pressures to unearth fresh database modeling and manage-
ment systems such as Not only Structured Query Language (NoSQL)
databases and Hadoop distributed file systems (HDFSs) to swiftly
capture, store, and search large-scale and multistructured data and
to extract actionable insights without much pain. Besides the volume
and the variety, data velocity is another critical factor to be considered
very carefully to derive and deduce usable intelligence and to contem-
plate the next course of action in time with full clarity and confidence.
Precisely speaking, big data is all about the three data Vs: volume,
variety, and velocity. e traditional data management systems find it
difficult to manage terabytes and petabytes of data and hence different
NoSQL databases have become very popular to handle voluminous
databases with ease.
Besides big data storage and management, big data analytics
(BDAs) has become an important phenomenon that cannot be side-
stepped at any cost as data across cloud, social, device, mobile, and
enterprise spaces need to be comprehensively identified and aggre-
gated, subjected to powerful data mining, processing, and analysis
tasks through well-defined policies dynamically and disseminated
promptly to be highly beneficial for businesses, governments, financial
institutions, and for firms involved in digital marketing, security and
retail intelligence, high-performance science and healthcare research,
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quick customer on-boarding, and so on. e widely used Hadoop
implementations, commodity servers, specific data appliances, and so
on are the predominant methods being effectively handpicked and
handled to accommodate terabytes and even petabytes of incongru-
ent data and to empower executives, entrepreneurs, and engineers to
make informed decisions in time and to plan pragmatic action plans
with alacrity. With the sustained eruption of inventive technologies,
the data architecture for new-generation enterprises will go through a
tectonic and meteoric shift. Leading market watchers predict that big
data management and intelligence will become common and casual
along with the already established data management solutions.
Leading infrastructure solution providers such as IBM, Amazon,
HP, Google, and other niche providers (Oracle, SAP, etc.) have devel-
oped high-performing and assuring cloud platforms and appliances to
accomplish BDA. us clouds are filled with numerous integrated plat-
forms for analytics, a growing array of cloud-native software services for
multifaceted devices, cloud-enabled enterprise applications, and so on
signaling the onset of the IoT era. Clouds will be the marketplace and
hosting different repositories of services and data to be easily discovered
and used for the ultimate empowerment of devices and people.
5.3.3.3 Cloud Infrastructures for Smart Phone Services Every application
is mobile enabled to allow distributed applications to be accessed and
used at vehicular speed. Mobile interfacing is being mandated widely.
A number of mobile technologies and tools are facilitating leverage of
all kinds of application while on the move. With the explosion of smart
phones and tablets, every kind of cloud and enterprise applications is
being provided with mobile interfacing. Several operating systems such
as Android, iOS, Windows Phones, BlackBerry OS, and so on are
available for powering up smart phones and mobile clouds (e.g., iCloud
is the mobile cloud for iOS phones, tablets, etc.) are being set up to host
and store all kinds of smart phone services, multistructured data, and
so on. at is, cloud connectivity is essential for phones to be relevant
for users. In short, an integrated network of disparate and distributed
resources, assets, and articles is the principal need for the smart world.
5.3.3.4 Device-to-Cloud (D2C) Integration Different types of devices
and digitized objects via multiple types of networks can communicate
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with a variety of locally as well as remotely deployed applications. e
Internet is the global-scale open, public, and affordable communica-
tion infrastructure. ese applications may have multiple interfaces. A
backhaul network, the communication backbone of the Internet infra-
structure, is an essential ingredient in enforcing and ensuring devices
at the ground level to talk to different applications at cloud-enabled
data centers (CeDCs), the new kind of software-defined data centers.
e iDigi Device Cloud (http://www.idigi.com/) is an infra-
structure service designed to empower different devices and their
networks. e iDigi Device Cloud solves the challenges of massive
scalability and service reliability while meeting the requirements for
utmost security and privacy. e iDigi Connector is also regarded as
the appropriate bridge for integrating client’s applications with the
iDigi Device Cloud. e cloud paradigm has grown enormously, with
an incredible number of applications in several business domains.
Specific cloud infrastructures are emerging. at is, we often hear
about sensor cloud, device cloud, knowledge cloud, mobile cloud, sci-
ence cloud, and so on. e pervasiveness and popularity of cloud tech-
nology is surging ahead with enhanced awareness about its strategic
contributions for the whole of humanity.
5.3.3.5 Cloud-to-Cloud (C2C) Integration Several types of cloud ser-
vice providers (CSPs) are leveraging diverse technologies delivering dif-
ferent business-centric services. Because of the enhanced complexity
and heterogeneity, the goal of cloud interoperability has become a diffi-
cult challenge for cloud services and application developers. Cloud bro-
kers, procurers, and auditors are therefore emerging and joining in the
already complicated cloud ecosystem. Even cloud consumers are afraid
of the vendor lock-in issue as manifold barriers are being erected around
cloud infrastructures and platforms. A couple of well-known trends are
gripping the cloud landscape. First, geographically distributed and dif-
ferentiating clouds are being established and sustained.
Second, institutions, individuals, and innovators are eyeing cloud
software, platforms, and infrastructures for reaping the originally pos-
tulated and pronounced benefits. at is, the same services are being
provided by multiple providers with different service-level agreements
and operation-level agreements. Incidentally, business processes that
span several clouds and services of multiple clouds need to be found,
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bound, and aggregated to build composite data, services, processes,
and applications. All of these clearly attest to the urgent need for
competent federation techniques, standards, patterns, platforms, and
best practices for a global network of clouds.
Intra- as well as interenterprise integration has to occur via cloud
integration services and solutions. Service organizations and system
integrators are embarking on a new fruitful journey as cloud broker-
ages to smooth the rough edges so that distinct and distributed clouds
can be identified and integrated seamlessly and spontaneously to work
collaboratively to achieve bigger and better things. Cloud service bro-
kers (CSBs) are a kind of new software solution for cloud data, ser-
vice, application, and process integration.
5.3.3.6 Sensor-to-Cloud (S2C) Integration Sensors and actuators are
found in many environments these days for different purposes. A sen-
sor network is a group of specialized transducers to monitor and record
conditions at diverse locations. Commonly monitored parameters are
temperature, humidity, pressure, wind direction and speed, illumi-
nation, vibration and sound intensities, power-line voltage, chemical
concentrations, pollutant levels, and vital body functions. Every sen-
sor node is equipped with a transducer, microcomputer, transceiver,
and power source. e transducer generates electrical signals based on
sensed physical effects and phenomena. e microcomputer processes
and stores the sensor output. e transceiver, which can be hard-wired
or wireless, receives commands from a central computer and transmits
data to that computer. e power for each sensor node is derived from
the electric utility or from a battery. Potential applications of sensor
networks include industrial automation, automated and smart homes,
video surveillance, traffic monitoring, medical device monitoring,
monitoring of weather conditions, air traffic control, and robot control.
As indicated previously, every empowered entity in our environ-
ment is further strengthened by being integrated with local IT and
remote cloud IT. As sensors are being prescribed as the eyes and ears
of the digital world of the future, sensor networking with nearby sen-
sors as well as with far-off applications needs to be facilitated. ere
are frameworks and middleware platforms for enabling ad hoc net-
working of diverse sensors within themselves as well as with distant
software components.
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In the past few years, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been
gaining significant traction because of their potential for enabling
very intimate and interesting solutions in areas such as smart homes,
industrial automation, environmental monitoring, transportation,
healthcare, and agriculture. e tremendous progress in WSN design
fosters their increasingly widespread usage and leading to growth in
both number of nodes per deployment and infrastructure complex-
ity. Today, a city-scale WSN deployment is no longer a novelty. is
trendy phenomenon generates lots of data of different types that have
to be synchronized, interpreted, adapted for specific needs, intercon-
nected with other data, and/or distinguished in service and applica-
tion data. If we add a collection of sensor-derived data to various social
networks or virtual communities, blogs, musings, and so on, then
there will be fabulous transitions in and around us. With the faster
adoption of micro- and nanotechnologies, everyday things are des-
tined to become digitally empowered to be distinctive in their actions
and reactions. us the impending goal is to seamlessly link digitized
objects/sentient materials at our environments; other frequently used
and handled devices such as consumer electronics, kitchen utensilsand
containers, household instruments and items; portable, nomadic, and
mobile gadgets and gizmos; and so on with remote cloud-based appli-
cations via federated messaging middleware. at is, cyber systems
are being inundated with streams of data and messages from different
and distributed physical elements and entities. Such an extreme and
deeper connectivity and collaboration will pump up and sustain cool,
classic, and catalytic situation-aware applications.
Clouds have emerged as the centralized, compact, and capable IT
infrastructure to deliver people-centric and context-aware services to
users with all the desired qualities embedded. is long-term vision
demands a comprehensive connectivity between clouds and the bil-
lions of minuscule sensing systems.
5.3.4 Big Data Analytics
We discussed this field and its continued impact extensively in Chapter
4. e gist of the matter is how easily and quickly you can transition
your data heaps into information and then to knowledge. Any orga-
nization that has the innate capacity and capability to extract rightful
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