Cloud computing services provide IT resources as services on demand. This is considered a key concept, which will lead a shift from an ownership-based paradigm to a new pay-for-use paradigm, which can reduce the fixed cost for IT resources, and improve flexibility and scalability. As IT services, cloud services have evolved from early similar computing concepts such as network computing, utility computing, server-based computing, and grid computing. So into cloud computing is highly related to and combined with various relevant computing areas. To seek promising issues and topics in cloud computing, it is necessary to understand the trends in cloud computing more comprehensively. In this study, we collect bibliographic information and citation information for cloud computing related papers published in major international journals from 1994 to 2012, and analyzes macroscopic trends and network changes to citation relationships among papers and the co-occurrence relationships of key words by utilizing social network analysis measures. Through the analysis, we can identify the relationships and connections among topics in cloud computing related areas, and highlight new potential topics. In addition, we visualize dynamic changes of topics relating to cloud computing using a proposed cloud computing research trend A trend map visualizes positions of topics in two-dimensional space. Frequencies of key words (X-axis) and the rates of increase in the degree centrality of key words (Y-axis) are used as the two dimensions of the trend map. Based on the values of the two dimensions, the two dimensional space of a map is divided into four areas: maturation, growth, promising, and decline. An area with high keyword frequency, but low rates of increase of degree centrality is defined as a mature technology area; the area where both keyword frequency and the increase rate of degree centrality are high is defined as a growth technology area; the area where the keyword frequency is low, but the rate of increase in the degree centrality is high is defined as a promising technology area; and the area where both keyword frequency and the rate of degree centrality are low is defined as a declining technology area. Based on this method, cloud computing trend maps make it possible to easily grasp the main trends in cloud computing, and to explain the evolution of topics. According to the results of an analysis of citation relationships, papers on security, distributed processing, and optical networking for cloud computing are on the top based on the page-rank measure. From the analysis of key words in papers, cloud computing and grid computing showed high centrality in 2009, and key words dealing with main elemental technologies such as data outsourcing, error detection methods, and infrastructure construction showed high centrality in 2010~2011. In 2012, security, virtualization, and resource management showed high centrality. Moreover, it was found that the interest in the technical issues of cloud computing increases gradually. From annual cloud computing trend maps, it was verified that security is located in the promising area, virtualization has moved from the promising area to the growth area, and grid computing and distributed system has moved to the declining area. The study results indicate that distributed systems and grid computing received a lot of attention as similar computing paradigms in the early stage of cloud computing research. The early stage of cloud computing was a period focused on understanding and investigating cloud computing as an emergent technology, linking to relevant established computing concepts. After the early stage, security and virtualization technologies became main issues in cloud computing, which is reflected in the movement of security and virtualization technologies from the promising area to the growth area in the cloud computing trend maps. Moreover, this study revealed that current in cloud computing has rapidly transferred from a focus on technical issues to for a focus on application issues, such as SLAs (Service Level Agreements).
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