Cloud@SG Summit

Session: Basic Introduction to Cloud Computing Applications & Systems
Monday, 13 April 2009

1030-1100
“Introduction to Cloud Computing”
Speaker: Foong Sew Bun IBM Distinguished Engineer & Chief Technology Officer (IBM)

Abstract
In this presentation, Sew Bun will discuss the issue of the IT Industry, businesses and society approaching a massive change with the advent of cloud computing. He will present the differentiating technologies of cloud computing with our existing technologies and where cloud computing is heading. He will also share how IBM has benefited from cloud computing as a company. He will conclude with advice for those keen to embark upon the journey of cloud computing.

Biodata
Foong Sew Bun was conferred the title of IBM Distinguished Engineer, a recognition reserved for the highest achievements of IBM technical professionals. Sew Bun is also an IBM Certified Senior Consulting IT Architect and Open Group Certified Master IT Architect. Sew Bun leads the IBM technical community in ASEAN and works with top IBM clients as the CTO for IBM Singapore, CTO for ASEAN Software Group and serves on the ASEAN business leadership team. In addition, he serves in several global IBM technical councils. Prior to IBM, Sew Bun was an entrepreneur in a start-up for a listed healthcare company, transforming a bank IT in pioneering days of object-orientation, lecturer and researcher in ISS, and principal engineer of a systems integrator developing multi-million dollar projects. Outside of IBM, Sew Bun is an Adjunct Associate Professor with National University of Singapore and the Chair of the National Infocomm Comptency Framework Steering Committee. Sew Bun graduated with a BSc and MSc (Computer Science) from the University of Texas at Austin.

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1100-1230
"Infrastructure-as-a-Service"
Speaker: David Lai (Alatum)

Abstract
The presentation will touch on what is Infrastructure As A Service (IaaS), what are the characteristics of IaaS offerings, why the hype around this offering, what are the benefits and risks of adopting IaaS as well as some real life case studies of users leveraging on this key technology trend.

Biodata
David Lai is a Senior Grid Engineer with SingTel and has 11 years of experience in the IT industry. He is involved in pre-sales and also manages the Alatum (SCS-HP Grid Service Provisioning) Operations with his team, overseeing all consultations, deployments into Alatum.
Previously, he was a Technology Evangelist and Solutions Architect in his previous jobs at SCS/NCS where he was involved in technology innovation, solutioning and architecting for enterprise applications built on Microsoft technologies.

. . .

1330-1500
“Platform-as-a-Service”
Speaker: Dr. Chew Tat Leong National Technology Officer (Microsoft Singapore)

Abstract
Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a platform providing cloud-based software development services for applications developers. Rather than build an application designed to run on a specific enterprise architecture, the creators of a new SaaS could instead build on a cloud platform. This new application can then be hosted and managed as a service on the cloud.

The main aim of presentation is to examine what this means for application developers (how do they program), software/product architects (new types of applications that can be built ground up), enterprise customers (how they can leverage cloud computing to complement their current IT environments) and even the home user by walking through key Azure components.

Windows Azure is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting and service management environment for the Azure Services Platform. That is to say, Windows Azure is an application development and .NET runtime environment, hosted and managed by Microsoft.

Windows Azure is an application platform offered as a service (PaaS).

Biodata
As National Technology Officer, Dr. Chew Tat Leong is responsible for engaging current and next generation policy makers on technology trends and policy. He will drive Microsoft's efforts to promote the use of innovative technologies for the community.Tat Leong has 21 years of working experience. Prior to joining Microsoft, Tat Leong was previously Chief Technology Officer of REAGROUP, Paris, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Renault-Nissan. REAGROUP handles sales and servicing of Renault, Nissan and Dacia cars over the whole of Europe. As CTO of REAGROUP, he designed and drove the implementation of the CRM system underlying Renault's car sales in France, used daily by 4000 car salesmen and their managers. He also drove a workshop marketing project which helped improve margins on car servicing; this project had a very high return on investment. At Renault, he worked on IT systems across all domains of car manufacturing, from assembly line, production planning, car sales and distribution. In particular, he was head of the Operations Research team of Renault's IT Division and was the company's resident Operations Research expert.Before France, Tat Leong was in Singapore where he worked on the Port of Singapore Authority's ship and yard planning project for which he received the National Science and Technology Award in 1993.

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1530-1700
“Software-as-a-Service ”
Speaker: Lim Chinn Hwa Executive Director (AkSaaS)

Abstract
TBA

Biodata
Lim Chiin Hwa Lim Chinn Hwa began his 17-year love affair with IT as a systems engineer with SCS, and moved into R&D environment working at a start-company from Stanford University. He founded Nothacker Pte Ltd in 2006 and renamed Aksaas in 2008 to reflect the direction of the business the company is moving into.

Session: R&D WG Discussion
Monday, 13 April 2009

1100-1105
“Welcome Address”
Speaker: Dr. Hing-Yan Lee Program Director (National Grid Office, Singapore)

Biodata
Dr. Hing-Yan Lee is Program Director of National Grid Office at the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, where he directs, plans and coordinates the national initiative to realize a cyber-infrastructure for sharing and aggregating compute resources for R&D, business and industry. He is concurrently seeding Cloud Computing efforts, including Singapore's participation as a centre of excellence as part of the Open Cirrus Cloud Computing Testbed. Prior to this role, Hing Yan was Deputy Director of National Grid Office at the Agency of Science, Technology And Research as well as Principal Scientist at the Institute for Infocomm Research. He was previously Director of Knowledge Lab and Deputy Director of Japan-Singapore Artificial Intelligence Centre at the Kent Ridge Digital Labs (KRDL). He oversaw and managed industry collaborations and applied R&D in machine translation, spoken language dialogue, expert systems on the Internet, knowledge discovery, and other knowledge-driven efforts. Prior to KRDL, Hing Yan was Deputy Director at the Information Technology Institute, the applied R&D arm of the National Computer Board.

. . .

1105-1110
“Welcome Address”
Speaker: Prof. Soh Yeng Chai Professor & Associate Dean[Research], College of Engineering (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)

Biodata
Prof. Soh Yeng Chai received the BEng degree in electrical and electronic engineering from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, in 1983, and the PhD degree in electrical engineering from the University of Newcastle, Australia, in 1987. His research interests include robust system theory and applications; estimation and filtering theory; hybrid and switched systems; optical signal processing; and information theory.

From 1986 to 1987, he was a research assistant in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Newcastle. He joined the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, in 1987 where he is currently a professor in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. From 1995 to 2005, he was the Head of the Control and Instrumentation Division. Since 2003, he has been the Director of the Centre for Modeling and Control of Complex Systems. Dr Soh is an honorary professor of Northeastern University. In 2005, Dr Soh was awarded the IES Prestigious Engineering Achievement Award.

. . .

1110-1130
“Cloud Computing Research in A*STAR”
Speaker: Dr. Terence Hung Program Manager Cum Senior Scientist, Advanced Computing Programme (Institute of High Performance Computing)

Abstract
Cloud computing has definitely come a long way in becoming a new computing paradigm that enterprises and research organizations have to reckon with.

We posit that the cloud model will evolve and take on new forms within the context of a digital service marketplace in the future. This compels us to look at other aspects of services computing to foster cloud's long-term sustainability and success. This talk will articulate IHPC's view on cloud computing and our quest for a deeper appreciation of "services" in the new context. We are particularly interested in the lifecycle management of a service - how services should be negotiated and established, what pricing strategy is appropriate for a marketplace and how service quality can be managed and ensured. For composite services or those that entail complex computations, how should reliability be managed when something fails? I will share my team's journey in the cloud and what we are doing to establish insight into the aforementioned challenges.

Biodata
Dr. Terence Hung is a Program Manager at the Institute of High Performance Computing (Singapore). He manages a group of researchers and provides management and technical leadership in areas such as HPC, grid computing, data mining, digital modeling and visualization. He holds an adjunct associate professor position with the School of Computer Engineering at the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore. Since 2006, Terence serves as council member of the Gerson Lehrman Group, providing consultancy in HPC and grid computing. He was also invited as external grant proposal reviewer for the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Chilean Research Fund Council. In 2008, Terence is appointed as the Asia/Pacific Director of the HP-CAST (Hewlett-Packard Consortium for Advanced Scientific and Technical computing user group) board.

Terence serves as PI and co-PI for 6 key international/local initiatives. He has worked on e-Science and HP-funded projects and co-directed a joint research effort with HP Labs to investigate new technologies for IT/HPC as shared services. Another current project co-led by Terence is a joint collaboration with the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore to explore HPC techniques for emerging heterogeneous architectures. Internationally, he champions IHPC's membership in PRAGMA and GELATO. Besides assisting in the organization of international conferences (e.g. ICCSA, ccGrid, HPCAsia, GridAsia, and GELATO ICE), he also reviews papers for IEEE Transactions on Computers and IEEE Internet Computing.

Terence graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1993 with a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering. He had also held the position of VP Technology at Commerce Exchange Pte Ltd in the area of e-commerce, e-financial and e-logistics.

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1130-1150
“Desktop-as-a-Service Using Moka5+VMWare+BioSlax and
its Potential for Grid and Cloud Computing”
Speaker: A/Prof. Tan Tin Wee Associate Professor, Dept of Biochemistry, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine (National University of Singapore)

Abstract
As a complement to Software as a Service (SaaS) and other models, we have developed and customised for a virtual LivePC desktop platform from MokaFive with our LiveCD/LiveDVD/LiveUSD operating system based on the Slax Linux Distribution, BioSlax, which is configured with a comprehensive range of bioinformatics software.

Bioslax is run on VMware's VMplayer, which in turn is wrapped around by MokaFive for rapid deployment without the need for installation of VMplayer on end-user machines. Users can run multiple instantiations of Live operating systems using MokaFive, and because there is no need for any installation, the MokaFive executable can run off any file or USD drive, or even from your mobile phone memory stick disk, so long as the PC can detect and mount the disk.

MokaFive allows us to customise and push our latest version of Bioslax to the MokaFive server, and end-users can simply executive MokaFive player and pull back whatever latest version from the MokaFive server and cache it. Alternatively, we can distribute a pre-packaged static version.

Using MokaFive-VMplayer-BioSlax in conjunction with grid software such as United Devices (or now known as Univa), will allow UD Grid MP to be easily deployed and new machines easily recruited, simply by getting end-users to start up MokaFive in order for their free CPU cycles to be harvested for a Grid such as NUS's Tera-Campus Grid. Moreover, any public user can also join in and contribute to our grid in a Cloud Computing paradigm by simply deploying our virtual desktop with GridMP. In this way, our campus grid can grow and scale seamlessly into a cloud of processors which we can push applications onto. Updates can also be simply and cleanly handled using this system.

Biodata
Tan Tin Wee is a pioneer of Bioinformatics, the Internet and Advanced Networking in Singapore and in Asia. He is currently working on various bioinformatics and immunoinformatics at the National University of Singapore.

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1150-1210
“Cloud Computing Research in NTU”
Speaker: A/Prof. Francis Lee Associate Chair (Research), School of Computer Engineering (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)

Abstract
Cloud computing extends over a wide area of research, from computer science to physics. Academics and scientists are beginning to appreciate the benefits of Cloud computing in their research. Some of the computer scientists in the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) are exploring the use of agents. A major forthcoming event is the establishment of a High Performance Computing Center in NTU (aka HPC@NTU). We anticipate projects that would deploy and extend the current usage and knowledge of Cloud computing. One such multi-discipline project is High Performance Computing using Cloud Computing technology. This talk will share some of the research activities in the computer science area as well as the applications that are targeted for trial on the Cloud computing infrastructure.

Biodata
A/Prof. Bu-Sung Lee received his B.Sc. (Hons) and PhD from the Electrical and Electronics Department, Loughborough University of Technology, UK in 1982 and 1987 respectively. He is currently an Associate Professor with the Nanyang Technological University and Associate Chair (Research), School of Computer Engineering. He is the invited lecturer to Osaka University, under the Pacific Rim International UniverSity program in 2005 and 2006. He is an active member of Pacific Rim Middleware and Application Association (PRAGMA).

In 2005, he and his team have successfully deployed the Multi-organisation Grid Accounting System (MOGAS) software, which they developed, across the PRAGMA grid test-bed covering over 10 sites in the region.

He has been actively involved with the Asia-Pacific research and education network since the formation of Singapore Advance Research and Education Network project in 1997. He was the Director of Network Technology of the Asia Pacific Advance Network Consortium (APAN) from 2000-2003. He is the founding president of the Singapore Research & Education Networks (SingAREN) society, 2003- 2007. Since 2004, he is a member of the technical management team of Trans-Eurasia Information Network (TEIN-2), the first large scale is the first large-scale research and education network for the Asia-Pacific.

It connects ten countries in the region, and provides direct connectivity to Europe's GEANT2 network. A/Prof. Bu-Sung Lee, has published over 100 peer preview papers, with over 60 journal papers. His research areas cover both Grid Computing and network. His particular interest are in data replication, scheduling, network Qos (wired and wireless), and ad hoc network. He has received a number of research grants. He has been active in the academic community in organizing conferences, eg. Program Chair for International Conference on Network (2005), Program Chair of Cluster Computing and the Grid (2006).

. . .

1210-1230
“Cloud Computing Research in SMU”
Speaker: Dr. Ma Dan Assistant Professor, School of Information Systems (Singapore Management University)

Abstract
Cloud computing has emerged as a dynamic scalable business model which delivers web-based services on demand. Two important features of such a "cloud economy" are: first, any (computing) resources such as data storage capacity, computing power, software applications, services, or a bundle of all of them, could be shared and accessed by customers through the Internet remotely. Second, these resources are delivered on demand. In this talk, I would like to discuss the economic fundamentals of the cloud business model.

Delivering services on-demand has its obvious economic advantages as well as "hidden" issues such as multi-tenancy. Under what situations the cloud computing solution is more cost saving compared to the traditional ownership model? How can users make choices between the two different IT models and what is the implication of it? More interestingly, will cloud computing continue to survive and success in the competitive market or it will vanish after a "trial" period? Using economic models, I try to investigate these questions and provide theoretical level guidance for the cloud computing future direction.

Biodata
Dr. Ma Dan is an Assistant Professor at the School of Information Systems, Singapore Management University. She received her Ph.D. in Computers and Information Systems from University of Rochester in 2006. Her research interests are in the fields of information systems management, software systems design and analysis, impacts of IT adoption on business, and electronic commerce.

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1330-1400
“Clouds Over Singapore”
Speaker: A/Prof. Francis Lee Associate Chair (Research), School of Computer Engineering (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)

Abstract
There have been great interests in Cloud Computing recently. Commercial cloud services for users are available e.g., Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) from Amazon. Almost all the major infocomm players have identified Cloud Computing as a strategic technology and have launched major initiatives to address the large issues in Cloud Computing. An example is the Open Cirrus Cloud Computing Testbed by HP, Yahoo and Intel.

In Singapore, we have seen several pockets of Cloud Computing research been carried out by the research institutes and universities. Recently members of the community came together, facilitated by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (iDA), to propose a collaborative project. This project aims to realize a new computing paradigm by considering several fundamental research areas in Cloud Computing, such as Virtualization, Resource Allocation & Information Management, Programming Models & Applications, and Scalability & Security. It is envisaged that this project will result in a number of new design principles for delivering the next generation of internet platforms and cloud services. This project will work closely and complement IDA's Cloud Computing initiative by developing the next-generation cloud computing reference architecture and its implementation. Coupled with the upcoming Next Generation National Broadband Network, this project has the potential to render a Compute-Anywhere Cloud infrastructure for advancing the scientific, business, and social computing needs in Singapore.

. . .

1400-1430
“Sensor Cloud: Towards Sensor-Enabled Cloud Services”
Speaker: Dr. Lim Hock Beng Program Director, Intelligent Systems Centre (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)

Abstract
Sensor cloud is the natural integration of sensor networks with cloud computing. The micro-to-meso scale data resolution from sensor networks and the immense computational and storage resources of the cloud enables us to interact with our physical world more closely, accurately and efficiently. Sensor cloud is a promising infrastructure for delivering cloud services accessible via sensor-rich mobile devices. It pushes the boundaries of computing with real world data, and enables limitless innovative applications in pervasive sensing, ambient intelligence, ubiquitous computing and social networking.

As a new paradigm, sensor cloud brings about several research challenges in terms of complex event processing, massive and real-time data management, integrating with large computing frameworks, and harnessing collective intelligence. In this talk, we will explain the sensor cloud paradigm and its associated challenges. We outline a proposed sensor cloud architecture to address these challenges. We will also discuss the proposed integration of large-scale environmental sensor deployments in the Asia-Pacific region with the Open Cirrus Cloud Computing testbed in Singapore, along with the potential applications to be prototyped.

Biodata
Dr Lim Hock Beng is program director of the Intelligent Systems Centre at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He received his BS in Computer Engineering, MS in Electrical Engineering, and PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his MS in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University. His research interests include sensor networks and sensor grids, cyber-physical systems, parallel and distributed computing, cloud computing, wireless and mobile networks, computer architecture, embedded systems, performance evaluation, e-Science and high-performance computing.

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1430-1500
“Yahoo-University Engagement Models and Collaborative Research”
Speaker: Chidambaran Kollengode Director Grid Engineering, Cloud Computing and Data Infrastructure (Yahoo! India R&D)

Abstract
Cloud computing is an area that shows a lot of promise in solving large data volume computations that were previously unthinkable. As an emerging area, there are many challenges and opportunities. Yahoo has collaborated with several universities in India and US to work together and meet these challenges. This presentation will explain the engagement models and explore opportunities for collaboration with Singapore universities.

Biodata
Chidambaran Kollengode is systems professional with over 20 years of progressively responsible experiences, with last eight years in senior leadership roles. He has a Masters degree in Business Administration (MBA) from Pennsylvania State University, with major in Information Systems and a Bachelor degree in Engineering from NIT, Trichy (formerly REC, Trichy).

He has a wealth of experience in technology development and organization building as well as a successful track record in building models and sustainable infrastructures for evidence-based management and quantitative fact-based analysis. He is a frequent presenter in enterprise architecture forums (India and abroad) is founder president of Data Management Association, Bangalore (since 2006), the first chapter in the Southeast Asia region, and a member of the Data Management Association, Philadelphia (since 1996). He has taught at the University of Phoenix as a visiting professor and continues to be practitioner faculty member and faculty mentor, teaching masters and undergraduate courses.

He is currently working in Cloud Computing in Yahoo! India R&D, Bangalore exploring the boundaries of distributed computing for very large volume data processing with high availability. Prior to coming to Yahoo, he worked at Amazon building a highly scalable distributed architecture for processing huge amounts of search and advertisement (Internet) data.

. . .

1530-1600
“HP Labs Research in Cloud Computing”
Speaker: Jason Tan Program Director, Strategic Research and Infrastructure (Hewlett-Packard)

Abstract
HP Labs conducts high-impact scientific research to address the most important challenges and opportunities facing our customers and society in the next decade. Cloud Computing is one of the eight broad themes of HP Lab. We see the “Cloud” representing the start of a “global repository of services”. This includes Web 2.0 and SaaS, which represent explorations into how independently created functionality can be easily linked and traversed. Our Cloud research is focused on delivering an application and computing end-state of Everything-as-a-Service: billions of users, accessing millions of services, through thousands of service providers, over millions of servers, processing exabytes of data, delivered through terabytes of network traffic.

The proliferation of the Internet has given rise to the opportunity to provide real-time access to consumer and business products, software and solutions, without the requirement that a user to personally own the underlying resources. Cloud services are accessed over the Internet via user-friendly web interfaces: they are location agnostic, they can be hosted through third party service providers and they can be quick to improve based on real-time customer feedback. Several elements are required for Cloud technologies to enable an “Everything-as-a-Service” economy:

A shared cloud infrastructure that provides enterprise-grade security, scalability and quality of service.
A development environment that makes it easy for enterprise application developers who are used to creating small standalone applications to in turn deliver secure- multi-tenant applications horizontally scalable to millions of users.
An operating environment that seamlessly delivers and updates Cloud services without impacting user experience
An easy way to combine multiple Cloud services in order to achieve business or personal tasks

In this talk, I will share the work undertaken by HP Labs in the above areas.

Biodata
Jason Tan is Program Director for Strategic Research and Infrastructure at Hewlett-Packard Singapore. In his current appointment, he worked with local country management to drive the new growth initiatives for HP Singapore, including cloud computing and software as a service. He is also the Open Innovation Office Lead for HP Lab in Singapore, driving research activities between Singapore and HP Lab. Prior to this, he was Business Development Manager for the High Performance Computing (HPC) and online gaming at HP South East Asia. This key responsibility was to develop grid computing, life science, digital media and online gaming industry in the region. Jason has extensive industry and technical experience in HPC especially in Life Science, Grid Computing and online gaming. He worked as country strategic business manager in Singapore and had driven several key initiatives in Singapore, such as HP's participation in National Grid program, utility computing, research collaboration, digital media and online gaming. Jason holds a bachelor degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

. . .

1600-1700
Panel Discussion - "What should Singapore focus in Cloud Computing R&D?"

Moderator: Dr. Steven Miller
Practice Professor and Dean, School of Information Systems (Singapore Management University)

Biodata
Dr. Steven Miller is founding Dean of the School of Information Systems (SIS) at Singapore Management University, and also serves as Practice Professor of Information Systems. Since 2003, he has led efforts to launch and establish the undergraduate, graduate and professional programs of the SIS. Immediately prior to joining SMU, Dr. Miller served as Chief Architect Executive for the Business Consulting Services unit of IBM Global Services in Asia Pacific. He held prior industry appointments with Fujitsu Network Systems, and with RWD Technologies. Dr. Miller started his professional career as an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, conducting research and teaching related to Computer-Integrated Manufacturing and Robotics applications and impacts.

He has a Bachelors of Engineering degree in Systems Engineering (Magna Cum Laude) from the University of Pennsylvania and a Masters of Science in Statistics and a PhD in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University.

. . .

Panelists: Dr. Terence Hung Program Manager, Advanced Computing Programme (Institute of High Performance Computing), Prof. Soh Yeng Chai Associate Dean (Research), College of Engineering (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore), A/Prof. Bharadwaj Veeravalli (National University of Singapore), Jason Tan Program Director, Strategic Research and Infrastructure (Hewlett-Packard), Chidambaran Kollengode Director Grid Engineering, Cloud Computing and Data Infrastructure (Yahoo! India R&D)

Biodata
A/Prof. Bharadwaj Veeravalli, Member, IEEE & IEEE-CS, received his BSc in Physics, from Madurai-Kamaraj Uiversity, India in 1987, Master's in Electrical Communication Engineering from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India in 1991 and PhD from Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India in 1994. He did his post-doctoral research in the Department of Computer Science, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, in 1996.

He is currently with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Communications and Information Engineering (CIE) division, at The National University of Singapore, Singapore, as a tenured Associate Professor. His main stream research interests include, Multiprocessor systems, Cluster/Grid computing, Scheduling in parallel and distributed systems, Bioinformatics & Computational Biology, and Multimedia computing. He is one of the earliest researchers in the field of divisible load theory (DLT). He has published over 85 papers in high-quality International Journals and Conferences. He had successfully secured several externally funded projects. He has co-authored three research monographs in the areas of PDS, Distributed Databases(competitive algorithms), and Networked Multimedia Systems, in the years 1996, 2003, and 2005, respectively. He had guest edited a special issue on Cluster/Grid Computing for IJCA, USA journal in 2004. He is currently serving the Editorial Board of IEEE Transactions on Computers, IEEE Transactions on SMC-A, and International Journal of Computers & Applications, USA, as an Associate Editor. He had served as a program committee member and as a Session Chair in several International Conferences and had been recently invited to contribute to Multimedia Encyclopedia, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2005.

Session: In The Cloud
Tuesday, 14 April 2009

0950-1010
“Intersection between Grid and Cloud”
Speaker: Laurence Liew Director, Open Source Grid Development Centre (Platform Computing)

Abstract
This session will cover the evolution of HPC clusters into Enterprise Grids and the current evolution of Enterprise Grids into Enterprise Clouds (internal or external). The audience will learn some of the push factors for Clouds and state-of-the-art adoption of Clouds for enterprise workloads, and the various use-cases of Clouds.

Biodata
Laurence Liew manages Platform Computing Inc. Open Source Grid Development Centre (OSGDC) in Singapore and HPCCommunity.org - a global resource for the HPC developers, users and engineers. Laurence is a veteran of the open source and HPC/Grid community and has been promoting the use of Linux/HPC/Grid since 1998. He was involved in building the very first commercial Linux cluster for a local research institute in 1999 and has since implemented and consulted for many organizations in APJ, Europe and US, on HPC and Grid. Laurence graduated from National University of Singapore with First Class Honors in Engineering.

. . .

1010-1030
“What Color is Your Cloud?”
Speaker: Dave Nielsen Founder & Principal Consultant (Platform D)

Abstract
Many have heard the story of the "Blind Men and the Elephant", but this parable can also be applied to the Cloud. There are as many different types of Cloud Computing as there are people to describe it. Dave will draw on his experience leading over 20 CloudCamps to describe different types of Clouds, share examples of how Cloud Computing is being used today, and how it might be used in the future.

Biodata
Dave Nielsen is the Executive Director of CloudCamp, an unconference where early adopters of Cloud Computing technologies exchange ideas. He also chairs the SDForum Cloud Services Special Interest Group in Silicon Valley. Prior to CloudCamp, Dave was a Developer Community Consultant at Platform D, the Director of Partner Programs at Strikeiron, and the Manager of the Developer Community at PayPal where Dave was PayPal's first Technical Evangelist. He also co-authored PayPal Hacks, an O'Reilly book.

. . .

1100-1120
“Manageability & interoperability of cloud environment”
Speaker: Dr. Stephen C. Perrenod Director for HPC and Grid Business Development, Asia-Pacific (Sun Microsystems)

Abstract
For over 25 years Sun Microsystems has promoted technologies in line with its vision of "The Network is the Computer." Now we are working on building the reality wherein "The Cloud is your Computer." Sun has a long history of contributions to open software and open source initiatives, including for grid computing and web services-oriented application development and deployment. We believe open computing and cloud computing go hand-in-hand.

Innovation and choice are underlying principles behind a comprehensive portfolio of offerings from Sun and our partners. Sun's open, network-centric approach coupled with optimized systems, software and services best enables us to provide critical building blocks for private and public cloud offerings.

In January, 2009 Sun announced the acquisition of Q-layer, a cloud computing company whose technology automates the deployment and management of both public and private clouds. The Q-layer technology simplifies cloud management and allows users to quickly provision and deploy applications. This provides a key component of Sun's strategy for building clouds, whether private or public.

Biodata
Dr. Stephen C. Perrenod is based in Singapore as Director for Sun Microsystems's HPC and Grid business development in the Asia-Pacific region. During over 9 years at Sun he has also lead HPC Marketing and HPC for the Education and Research markets at Sun headquarters in Silicon Valley. He has been involved in high performance and scientific computing for 25 years in technical, sales and marketing roles with Cray Research, Alliant, SGI, and the multicore optimization startup eXludus. He holds a B.S. in Physics from M.I.T. and Masters and Ph.D. degrees in Astrophysics from Harvard.

. . .

1120-1140
“Selecting the right architecture for cloud computing”
Speaker: Adesh Gupta Server Platform Architecture Manager (Intel)

Abstract
A migration to cloud computing involves significant changes to the role of an IT organization, supplier relationships, and the way applications are developed and used. From the perspective of an IT organization, there are a number of key areas to consider, including composite applications, standards, and external and internal clouds. In Intel, we have an evolving cloud computing strategy based on growing the cloud from the inside out: building an internal cloud, then migrating to an external cloud as the market matures and security and privacy concerns are addressed. Meanwhile, we are already taking advantage of SaaS for specific applications where there are clear benefits. The impetus for this transformation will be standardization. We also envision middleware that allows any client to connect to any service, facilitating the migration of services between internal and external clouds without disruption to users. As external clouds grow in sophistication, it will be imperative for IT organizations to consider the right platform architecture to enable a smooth migration to this emerging and evolving computing paradigm shift.

Biodata
Adesh Gupta joined Intel in 1999 and since then has been in various Engineering, Business Development, Marketing, and Architecture Enabling roles in Intel. He has been in the IT industry for 20 years with a focus on server & storage solutions. As a Server Platform Architecture Manager, his primary responsibility is to drive the server business growth with our partners across Asia/Pacific.

. . .

1140-1200
“Considerations for Enterprise Cloud Computing”
Speaker: Kew Yoke Ling Solution Development Manager (Oracle)

Abstract
This presentation covers various considerations on enterprise cloud computing. It touches on the deployment of existing applications to the cloud and the considerations for public vs private cloud.

Biodata
Kew Yoke Ling is a Solution Development Manager, Oracle Singapore. Part of the Managing Director Office, his charters include strategic business development, government and academy relations and solution architecting. Yoke Ling has 9 years experience with a number of IT MNCs. He started his IT career with Oracle Malaysia as presales consultant for 4 years, after which, he switched to business-oriented roles as senior account manager (ESG Business Solutions) & business development manager (Quest Software Malaysia).

Yoke Ling has Bsc. (Hons) in Computing, and post-graduate diploma (Chartered Institute of Marketing). He is also an Oracle Certified Professional (OCP).

. . .

1200-1220
“Navigating Security and Bandwith Challenges within the Cloud”
Speaker: Stuart Spiteri Director, Asia-Pacific (Akamai Technologies)

Abstract
As more key business applications move online and into the Cloud, it's crucial for businesses to fully understand the security and overall deliverability challenges posed by the Internet.

Internet security threats evolve by the day and can range from worm viruses to bot DDoS attacks. The physical infrastructure of the Internet also plays an important role in getting mission critical applications to end users around the globe. Recent under water cable cut in the Middle East and earthquakes in Taiwan affected dozens of countries and millions of internet users were unable to access websites for unusually long periods of time. How real are threats like these and what do you need to know as you plan your Cloud Computing strategy?

Join Stuart Spiteri, Managing Director of Asia Pacific for Akamai Technologies as he discusses the most recent Internet threats as collected in Akamai's quarterly State of the Internet report. He'll also be discussing how variations of bandwidth around the world can affect organizations' transition into the Cloud and what you need to know to maximize your business in the Cloud. Akamai will be handing out the full State of the Internet report at the end of this discussion.

Biodata
Stuart Spiteri is the Managing Director of Asia-Pacific for Akamai Technologies Inc (NASDAQ: AKAM), the leading global service provider for accelerating content and business processes online. More than 1,800 organizations have formed trusted relationships with Akamai, improving their revenue and reducing costs by maximizing the performance of their online businesses.

Stuart leads Akamai’s Asia-Pacific operations, headquartered in Singapore and is responsible for the company’s vision and mission in the Asia Pacific region.

Prior to joining Akamai in 2005, Stuart was formerly the Chief Operating Officer of 24/7 Media Asia, a pan regional joint venture between 24/7 Media of the US and Hong Kong internet leader, Chinadotcom (NASDAQ: CHINA). Before 24/7, Stuart led the Asia-Pacific conference business of The Economist Group, which worked with senior leaders of MNCs in Asia Pacific, providing insights and experiences to those companies operating in the region.

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1220-1240
“The Road to Cloud Computing”
Speaker: Damian Ryan Regional Manager, Data Center Asia (Cisco Systems)

Abstract
Cloud computing is an emerging trend which has captured the interest of service providers and of enterprises. Cloud Computing inherently involves networking and Cisco is making sure we serve this market with best practices, standards, and solutions. In this presentation we will discuss some of the enablers, building blocks and steps on the evolutionary road to Cloud Computing.

Biodata
Damian Ryan is Cisco’s Regional Manager for Data Center Asia, The Cisco Data Center team provides customers with network solutions that consolidate, Virtualize and automate the provisioning of Data Center application and computing resources to drive operational efficiency and business agility.

Damian has over 20 years experience architecting, designing and implementing network and data center environments. He has previously held consulting roles at British Telecom, Brocade Communications and the UKbased NatWest Bank. At NatWest, Damian was part of the team that architected, designed and deployed a multi-million dollar green field Data Center.

Session: Hadoop for Users Training
Tuesday, 14 April 2009

0950-1700
Trainer: Venkatesh Seetharamaiah (Yahoo! India R&D)

Biodata
Venkatesh Seetharamaiah has over 14 years of experience in design, development, integration and testing of application software systems. He also has extensive experience in architecting/designing/testing large-scale distributed enterprise applications employing Java, B2B and Wireless technologies at Fortune 500 clients such as Thomson Learning, Humana Inc., and Bank of America. He has a passion for distributed object middleware technology and have been constantly exploring bleeding-edge solutions for solving problems in the enterprise world. He works in the Cloud Computing group at Yahoo India.

Session: Technical WG Discussion
Tuesday, 14 April 2009

1530-1700
Panel Discussion - "Physical Resource Set (PRS) – It’s not important?"
Moderator: A/Prof. Francis Lee Associate Chair (Research), School of Computer Engineering (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)

. . .

Panelists: Adesh Gupta Server Platform Architecture Manager (Intel), Dr. Henry Novianus Palit Research Engineer (Institute of High Performance Computing), Jason Oh Technical Consultant (Hewlett-Packard)

Biodata
Dr. Henry Novianus Palit joined IHPC in April 2006. His research interests are in the fields of multimedia QoS delivery, utility computing, and system workload analysis. For the past two years, he has been working on realising HPC-as-a-Service. He is also involved in the IHPC – HP Labs collaboration effort to establish a Shared Services Platform, a service marketplace where providers and consumers can offer and look for IT/computer services.

Henry holds a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology and University of Indonesia, respectively. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the National University of Singapore.

Biodata
Jason Oh graduated from University of London with a B.Sc in Computing and Information System. He has worked at Hewlett-Packard for 8 years in various technical roles. The most recent 3 years he has been a Technical Consultant with the regional SEA Presales team providing HPC and Linux consultancy and solutions for customer in the SEA region. Prior to HP, Jason has spent 5 years with DSO National Labs managing engineering computers based on various Unix vendor from Digital, SUN and SGI.

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1330-1400
“Conclusions from ITSC Interoperability Day 2009”
Speaker: Dr. Chew Tat Leong National Technology Officer (Microsoft Singapore)

Abstract
The IT Standards Committee (ITSC) of Singapore looks at IT standardization issues and represents Singapore in international standards. On 18 of March 2009, the ITSC ran an "Open Standards Day" aimed specifically at addressing Cloud Computing Interoperability issues. Cloud Computing players were invited to address the following question:"What is the degree of lock-in in the different cloud computing platforms? If so, is there a case for standards?" Various views of the issue were presented ranging from that of the government, the user community and the vendors such as Platform Computing, Adobe, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle. The session ended with a panel where the discussion was centred on the needs for standards in Cloud Computing.

This presentation will provide a summary of the questions, issues examined, and responses. It will provide a suitable backdrop for GridAsia's very own panel discussion on "Cloud Interoperability - Is it possible?"

Biodata
As National Technology Officer, Dr. Chew Tat Leong is responsible for engaging current and next generation policy makers on technology trends and policy. He will drive Microsoft's efforts to promote the use of innovative technologies for the community.

Tat Leong has 21 years of working experience. Prior to joining Microsoft, Tat Leong was previously Chief Technology Officer of REAGROUP, Paris, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Renault-Nissan. REAGROUP handles sales and servicing of Renault, Nissan and Dacia cars over the whole of Europe. As CTO of REAGROUP, he designed and drove the implementation of the CRM system underlying Renault's car sales in France, used daily by 4000 car salesmen and their managers. He also drove a workshop marketing project which helped improve margins on car servicing; this project had a very high return on investment.

At Renault, he worked on IT systems across all domains of car manufacturing, from assembly line, production planning, car sales and distribution. In particular, he was head of the Operations Research team of Renault's IT Division and was the company's resident Operations Research expert.

Before France, Tat Leong was in Singapore where he worked on the Port of Singapore Authority's ship and yard planning project for which he received the National Science and Technology Award in 1993.

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1400 - 1500
Panel Discussion - "Cloud Interoperability – Is it possible?"
Moderator: Tan Chee Chiang Associate Director, Computer Centre (National University of Singapore)

Biodata
Tan Chee Chiang's involvement in HPC and research computing started about 20 years ago when he was a Research Assistant at the National University of Singapore (NUS). After joining NUS Computer Centre in 1993, he was tasked to set up a central HPC and scientific visualisation facility, introduced the first Cray Vector supercomputer on campus. Since then, he has been playing a major role in driving the introduction of various other HPC technologies and services to the research community that include the remote visualisation system, HPC clusters, HPC Portal, an integrated Windows/Linux HPC environment and the NUS Grid. The NUS Grid project, which is based on the cycle harvesting technology, was honoured with the CIO Asia awards by the CIO Magazine in 2006. His current focus is on developing an Enterprise Architecture and a HPC service provisioning model for research computing at NUS.

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Panelists: Dr. Chew Tat Leong National Technology Officer (Microsoft Singapore), Alex Ng Managing Director (ClearManage), Laurence Liew Director, Open Source Grid Development Centre (Platform Computing), Dr. Stephen C. Perrenod Director for HPC and Grid Business Development, Asia-Pacific (Sun Microsystems)

Before France, Tat Leong was in Singapore where he worked on the Port of Singapore Authority's ship and yard planning project for which he received the National Science and Technology Award in 1993.

Biodata
Alex Ng Alex Ng is business owner of a Managed Hosting and IT Service company providing innovative and quality managed hosting and IT service in Singapore since 2005. A hands-on entrepreneur who is always on the look-out for best in breed technologies that will enhance IT utilization in SMEs and enterprise, he helps stakeholders to make use of IT to improve their business efficiency and effectiveness. Alex has spent much of his working life in various IT and business positions, from web development house, ISP to enterprise IT and process/business management. He has an intimate understanding of SME IT needs and how they should be addressed.

Session: Industry WG Discussion
Tuesday, 14 April 2009

1330-1500
Panel Discussion - "I am an SME. What’s my business model for the cloud?"
Moderator: Dr. Leong Mun Kew Chief Technology Officer & Deputy Chief Information Officer (National Library Board, Singapore)

Biodata
Dr. Leong Mun Kew is CTO and Deputy CIO of the National Library Board where he is responsible for ensuring the alignment of IT to business strategy, and for looking at future technology directions. Prior to that, Mun Kew was Principal Scientist and Programme Director for Services Research at the A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research. From 1999 to 2001, Mun Kew was VP and CTO at an IT startup delivering custom distributed deep search technologies and services. His personal research was in information retrieval, mobile and social information management, educational technologies, digital libraries and distributed multilingual search systems. He has published and patented in these areas, and is an invited speaker at many talks. Mun Kew received his PhD from Stanford University. He has more than 20 years of R&D and commercial experience in IT. He serves as a member of the Advisory Board for the School of IT at Temasek Polytechnic, the advisory board of the AIRS Symposium series, and was formerly Adjunct Assoc. Prof at the National Institute of Education.

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Panelists: Lim Chinn Hwa Executive Director (AkSaaS), Christopher Yeo (Cloud Entrepreneur), Lo Sheng Vice President (Muvee), Kenneth Yeo

Biodata
In 1994, Christopher Yeo and a few friends started a supply chain software company which grew rapidly into a world-class player in internet-based supply chain execution software over the next nine years. With a first class honours bachelors degree in computer science, Chris is passionate about software development and has around 20 years of experience in database technologies, operations research, Web2.0 and search technologies. Over the last three years, Chris has also been directly involved in the venture community in Singapore.

Biodata
Lo Sheng is a founding member of muvee, pioneer and leader in automatic video editing applications for consumers. He currently leads a team to deliver shwup.com, an online extension of the muvee experience that delivers private, group sharing of photos and home videos and the unique ability to create muvees online. Lo Sheng also manages the corporate IT infrastructure. In the early founding days, he has worked on developing the desktop application, building the QA team and establishing the technical delivery team to handle the global PC OEM accounts. Lo Sheng is also a huge fan of Linux and open source technologies, and promote their adoption in the corporate environment.

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1530-1700
Panel Discussion - “What do cloud service providers have to do to make enterprise confident enough to move to the cloud?”
Moderator: Dr. Leong Mun Kew Chief Technology Officer & Deputy Chief Information Officer (National Library Board, Singapore)

. . .

Panelist: Stuart Spiteri Director, Asia-Pacific (Akamai Technologies), Dr. Paul Wang Director, Programme Management Office (Integrated Health Information Systems), Goh Boon Seng Vice President, IT (Deutsche Bank), Dean Stockwell Professional Services Director, Asia Pacific (NetSuite)

Stuart leads Akamai’s Asia-Pacific operations, headquartered in Singapore and is responsible for the company’s vision and mission in the Asia Pacific region.

A frequent speaker on the business and technology speaking circuit, Stuart has also been on CNBC and is extensively quoted in the media including Straits Times and Communications Day in Australia. Currently based in Singapore, Stuart is an Australian national and has a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Melbourne and an Intermediate Diploma of Mandarin from the Nanjing Normal University, China.

Biodata
Dr. Paul Wang is currently the director in the Programme Management Office at Integrated Health Information Systems. Before the new appoint at IHiS, Paul served as the Director in the CIO's Office at the National Healthcare Group IT Division and as Director (Project) at Alexandra Hospital driving the innovation activities. Paul holds degrees of PhD in Strategic Management, MSc (Management of Technology) and BSc (Comp Sc & Info Sys) from the National University of Singapore. He is interested in technology discontinuity and how emerging technological platform can influence and be influenced by innovation activities in the healthcare sector.

Biodata
Goh Boon Seng started as a systems programmer in National Computer Board in 1987. He spent his formative IT years in NCB performing a variety of roles; systems programmer, heading up the infrastructure section in the NCB IS department, national IT architect etc. He left NCB to join Deutsche Bank in 1996. Till last year, he was the Asia-Pacific IT Head for Deutsche Bank’s financial messaging systems which are used by the various business lines in more than 25 locations around the region. He was also responsible for a 24hr Global IT Support Center in Singapore to support the Bank’s financial messaging systems worldwide. Recently, he moved into a new global role of Infrastructure Services Manager - interfacing between the Bank’s application and infrastructure organizations in order to enable the applications to run on a resilient infrastructure in the most cost-efficient manner.

His job experience and knowledge is very much spread across the different IT areas; network design and management, systems management and operations, application project management and support etc. He is a BCS member and Chartered IT Professional, and a member of SCS.

Boon Seng has a MSc (Distinction) from Edinburgh University, Scotland with speciality in networking, distributed systems and high performance computing. He was jointly awarded the Sidney Michaelson Memorial Prize for best performance in the course.

Biodata
TK Ng Dean Stockwell is the General Manager and Professional Services Director for Netsuite Asia Pacific. Reporting to the worldwide Head of Global Services, Dean is responsible for overseeing Netsuite's customer service and implementation activities in the Asia/Pacific region.

Prior to joining Netsuite in 2004, Dean held positions at Plumtree Software, a leading provider of corporate portal (SOA) technology and prior to that, Dean was Head of Technology Services (APAC) for McAfee, specialising in enterprise security solutions and instrumental in the development of the APAC business from 1997 to 2001.

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