Glossary

Definition of some terms, from the PANACEA point of view

Application life cycle management platform as a service (ALM PaaS) solutions are defined as cloud-delivered tools designed to govern the development and delivery of software. These platforms combine core ALM capabilities with extensibility based on Web service protocols and delivery via cloud infrastructure. ALM PaaS tools can support on-premises and cloud applications.

Application performance monitoring (APM) is one or more software and hardware components that facilitate monitoring to meet five main functional dimensions: end-user experience monitoring (EUM), runtime application architecture discovery modeling and display, user-defined transaction profiling, component deep-dive monitoring in application context, and analytics.

Application platform as a service (aPaaS) is a cloud service that offers development and deployment environments for application services.

Autonomic cloud manager: An Autonomic Cloud Manager provides support for autonomic systems in typical Cloud scenario by means of self-awareness (sensor mechanism) and self-configuration (effector mechanism). Those mechanisms are used by the autonomic system inside a VM to perform proactive autonomic management of cloud services. 

Client/Server: The splitting of an application into tasks performed on separate computers connected over a network. In most cases, the “client” is a desktop computing device (e.g., a PC) or a program “served” by another networked computing device (i.e., the “server”). 

Cloud Broker: is an entity that creates and maintains relationships with multiple cloud service providers. It acts as a liaison between cloud services customers and cloud service providers, selecting the best provider for each customer and monitoring the services

Cloud computing: according to Armbrust, it refers to both the applications delivered as services over the Internet, and the hardware and system software in the data centers that provide those services”.

Cloud Portability: The ability to move applications (and often their associated data) across cloud computing environments from different cloud providers, as well as across private or internal cloud and public or external clouds. 

Cloud provider: A company that provides cloud-based platform, infrastructure, application, or storage services to other organizations and/or individuals, usually for a fee.

Cloud services brokerage (CSB): is an IT role and business model in which a company or other entity adds value to one or more (public or private) cloud services on behalf of one or more consumers of that service via three primary roles including aggregation, integration and customization brokerage. A CSB enabler provides technology to implement CSB, and a CSB provider offers combined technology, people and methodologies to implement and manage CSB-related projects               

Cloud Standards - A standard is an agreed-upon approach for doing something. Cloud standards ensure interoperability, so you can take tools, applications, virtual images, and more, and use them in another cloud environment without having to do any rework. Portability lets you take one application or instance running on one vendor’s implementation and deploy it on another vendor’s implementation.

Content Delivery Network: A content delivery network (CDN) is a system of distributed servers (network) that deliver webpages and other Web content to a user based on the geographic locations of the user, the origin of the webpage and a content delivery server.

Denial of Service (DoS): A denial of service (DoS) attack is a malicious attempt to make a server or a network resource unavailable to users, usually by temporarily interrupting or suspending the services of a host connected to the Internet.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS):  A type of DoS where multiple compromised systems are used to target a single system causing a Denial of Service (DoS) attack. 

Hybrid cloud: is an amalgamation of at least one private cloud and at least one public cloud. Although the elements of the hybrid cloud are bound together, they remain unique entities, which allow hybrid clouds to offer the benefits of multiple deployment models at once.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): delivers computer infrastructure, typically a platform virtualization environment, as a service. Rather than purchasing servers, software, data center space or network equipment, clients instead buy those resources as a fully outsourced service. The service is typically billed on a utility computing basis and amount of resources consumed (and therefore the cost) will typically reflect the level of activity. It is an evolution of web hosting and virtual private server offerings.

Intellectual property rights: According to the World Trade Organization, IPR are the rights given to persons over the creations of their minds. They usually give the creator an exclusive right over the use of his/her creation for a certain period of time.

Machine learning: a branch of artificial intelligence, concerns the construction and study of systems that can learn from data. Machine Learning is a natural outgrowth of the intersection of Computer Science and Statistics.

Memory leak: A memory leak is the gradual loss of available computer memory when a program (an application or part of the operating system) repeatedly fails to return memory that it has obtained for temporary use

NEST:  NEST (Network Engineering and Simulation Tool) is an integrated workbench developped by QoS Design that proposes several software modules and tools for the simulation and planning of large-scale telecommunication networks.

OpenNebula: is a cloud computing toolkit for managing heterogeneous distributed data center infrastructures. The OpenNebula toolkit manages a data center's virtual infrastructure to build private, public and hybrid implementations of infrastructure as a service.

Open Shortest Path First (OSPF): is a routing protocol for internet protocol networks. It uses a link state routing algorithm and falls into the group of interior routing protocols, operating within a single autonomous system.

Overlay network: An overlay network is a computer network that is built on top of another network. Nodes in the overlay network can be thought of as being connected by virtual or logical links, each of which corresponds to a path, perhaps through many physical links, in the underlying network.

PANACEA: FP7 project funded by the EU that aims to provide Proactive Autonomic Management of Cloud Resources, based on Machine Learning,  as a remedy to the exponentially growing Cloud complexity. 

Platform as a Service (PaaS): Cloud platform services, whereby the computing platform (operating system and associated services) is delivered as a service over the Internet by the provider. The PaaS layer offers black-box services with which developers can build applications on top of the compute infrastructure. This might include developer tools that are offered as a service to build services, or data access and database services, or billing services.

Public cloud: is a term used to describe the common cloud computing model whereby a service provider makes resources like software or data storage available over the internet.

Private clouds A private cloud is a particular model of cloud computing that involves a distinct and secure cloud based environment in which only the specified client can operate.

Response time: Response time is the total amount of time it takes to respond to a request for service. That service can be anything from a memory fetch, to a disk IO, to a complex database query, or loading a full web page. Ignoring transmission time for a moment, the response time is the sum of the service time and wait time.

Software as a Service (SaaS): Cloud application services, whereby applications are delivered over the Internet by the provider, so that the applications don’t have to be purchased, installed, and run on the customer’s computers. SaaS providers were previously referred to as ASP (application service providers). In the SaaS layer, the service provider hosts the software so you don’t need to install it, manage it, or buy hardware for it. All you have to do is connect and use it. SaaS Examples include customer relationship management as a service.

TCP: The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is a core protocol of the Internet Protocol Suite. It was originated in the initial network implementation in which it complemented the Internet Protocol (IP). Therefore, the entire suite is commonly referred to as TCP/IP.

Test-bed: Platform for experimentation of large development projects. Test-beds allow for rigorous, transparent, and replicable testing of scientific theories, computational tools, and new technologies.

Vendor lock-in: Dependency on the particular cloud vendor and difficulty moving from one cloud vendor to another due to lack of standardized protocols, APIs, data structures (schema), and service models.

Virtualization:  refers to technologies designed to provide a layer of abstraction between computer hardware systems and the software running on them.

Virtual Machine: A virtual machine (VM) is a software implementation of a machine (e.g., a computer) that executes programs like a physical machine. 

Wide Area Network (WAN): is a telecommunications network or computer network that extends over a large geographical distance. Wide area networks often are established with leased telecommunication circuits