The “Cloud” is a natural evolution of distributed computing and of the widespread adaption of virtualization and SOA. Social computing is a new cross-discipline that covers the science and technology needed to bridge the gap between Social networking services and IT services.

Social computing and networking is concerned with the intersection of social behaviour and computing systems, creating or recreating social conventions and contexts through the use of software and technology. Various social computing applications such as blogs, email, instant messaging, social networking (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ etc.), wikis, and social bookmarking have been widely popularised by providing digital platforms for social interaction. Such applications have been profoundly change social behaviours and digital life styles of humankind whilst pushing the boundaries of Internet technologies. While people can enjoy or even indulge in the benefits such as freedom and convenience brought about by social computing, various critical issues such as trust, privacy, HCI design, and the modelling as well as understanding of social behaviours via computational means provide significant challenges.

In Cloud computing, IT-related capabilities and resources are provided as services, via the Internet and on-demand, accessible without requiring detailed knowledge of the underlying technology. The goal of social computing is to develop new computing technology and thereby enable more advanced IT social networking services to support business services more efficiently and effectively. The session on Social Computing and Cloud is an important forum for researchers and industry practitioners to exchange information regarding advancements in the state of art and practice of IT-driven cloud computing technologies and social networking services, as well as to identify emerging research topics and define the future directions of cloud and Social Networking. 

The Session Topics

Social Computing and Networks

Social Cloudlet Architecture

Digital Leadership: Balancing Digital Business Value and the Need for Security

Assessing and Measuring the Impact of Digital Risk on your Business

Identity & Access Management as a Digital Business Enabler: Covering Associates, Customers and Partners

Cloud Security, Privacy & Compliance

Hybrid Cloud: Integrating Internal and External Environments at all Levels

Managing Cyber Risk: Why Defence is not Enough

The Impact of the Internet of Things on your Business and Infrastructure

IT & Operational Technology (OT): Catalyzing the Fusion of two Contrasting Cultures

Mobile Infrastructure & Mobility Management

Architecting cloud computing with enabling technologies, such as Web services and semantic Web

Cloud based industry applications, such as cloud based search, cloud based e-business and mobile commerce, wireless cloud

Cloud computing economics including ROI, TCO, purchasing models, pricing models of cloud computing

Cloud computing standards (such as those derived from OVF,)

Cloud middleware and toolkits

Cloud programming models, such as MapReduce/e.g., Hadoop, coordination for distributed computing/e.g., ZooKeeper, Web scale NOSQL database/e.g., Cassandra

Cloud reference architectures and service models

Cloud service management

IaaS technologies, especially virtual technologies and their application in dynamic resource provisioning

Interoperability among format of different virtual machines (e.g., VMware, Xen, KVM)

Key characteristics of cloud programming, such as agility, cost, device and location independence, reliability, security, sustainability, scalability, and maintenance

Method, model, and process for creating and deploying virtual images, defining the patterns and parts for application middleware and applications

Monitoring and automatic scaling of cloud computing resources

Open API and service orchestration on cloud platform

Optimization, dynamic sharing and provisioning of virtual resources such as virtual machines, virtual storage, and VLAN

Other cloud services (connectivity services, and persistence services, including NOSQL technologies)

PaaS technologies, especially cloud platform management technologies including fast provisioning of complex topologies

Practice of using open source cloud computing technologies

SaaS technologies (such as multi-tenancy, management of applications and tenants in multi-tenant environment)

Scientific, industrial and social implications of cloud computing

Standards

Technologies for green data centers (e.g., algorithms and technologies that could help save power in data centers)

Technologies to support high availability, scalability, and caching to enhance runtime in cloud platform

Theoretical model of cloud computing

Workload characters and performance evaluation and modeling of cloud computing