Clouds4Coordination: Managing Project Collaboration in Federated Clouds

Abstract

The use of cloud computing for AEC (Architecture/ Engineering/ Construction) projects has been intensively explored in recent research. Companies have adopted cloud computing for storing the massive amount of data that the AEC industry generates. In most cases these cloud systems are private, isolated and limited in terms of the actual computing operations. With the emergence of "multi-Clouds" or Cloud-of-Clouds environments it has become possible to link such systems and create a distributed environment. The key benefits suggested for such an aggregation is: (i) reduced reliance on a single cloud infrastructure, (ii) improved fault tolerance (whereby failure in one Cloud system does not render the entire infrastructure inoperable), (iii) improved security -- similar argument to fault tolerance, i.e. a breach in one Cloud system does not impact the entire infrastructure, (iv) the ability to utilise capability (and data) that may only be available in one Cloud system and not be easily transferable to another. Such infrastructure becomes efficacious when multiple individuals and organisations work collaboratively. In this paper we present a coordination model for distributed clouds where the interacting parties are represented by AEC industry organisations. We present the underlying architecture that has been implemented as part of the "Clouds-for-Coordination"(C4C) project and provide a real use case where different organisations work jointly on an AEC project. We validate our system by measuring an "aggregated time-to-complete" metric over a number of different scenarios.