Cloud-based Greener and Smarter Service Environments International Journal of Computing Technology and Information Security Vol.1, No.

1, pp.14-23, March, 2011

Pethuru Raj

Cloud-based Greener and Smarter Service Environments

Pethuru Raj
Robert Bosch Engineering & Business Solutions (RBEI) Ltd., Gold Hill Square, Bommanahalli, Bangalore-560068, India. peterindia@gmail.com
Abstract: Nowadays ICT has strongly seeped into homes and buildings. That is, building and sustaining automated, aware, adaptive, and active homes and buildings have been gaining immense momentum with the faster emergence and evolution of home and building automation and integration technologies, infrastructures, devices, services, and processes. The prevailing trend is that homes and buildings across the globe are being continuously stuffed, saturated and stunned with a variety of exquisite automation elements, connectivity solutions, and digital electronics in order to sharply increase the quality of human living, to enhance human productivity and to guarantee heightened care, comfort, convenience and choice for home owners and occupants. However, devices, which come in different shapes, scopes and sizes, are in silos only as they are not seamlessly and spectacularly interactive and instinctive with one another to be ubiquitously useful and usable for people. In this paper, we would like to emphasize and espouse how disparate and distributed devices are being connected quickly for purposeful coordination so that smart homes and buildings can be IT-enabled to the fullest happiness of users. Finally how the evolving cloud technology can further boost next-generation homes and offices with a stunning array of proven and potential network services that can be aggregated adroitly to achieve sophisticated things, which ultimately lead to greener, leaner, cleaner and smarter homes, hospitals and hotels. Scores of cloud-based simple and atomic services can be orchestrated to realize cognition-attached device ensembles that are community-centric, context-aware, autonomic, realtime, and dynamic. The currently dominating centralized and box-based approach will pave the way for much more distributed, decentralized, cloud-backed, creative and catalytic method of establishing nextgeneration homes. Keywords: Cloud Computing, Context-aware, Next-generation Homes, Smarter Service Environment.

1. Introduction
Elegant and exotic sensors, actuators, controllers, displays and robots are hitting the market very frequently these days. But the painful point is that these are working in silos and unable to connect and cooperate with one another in their vicinity or over the network for greater and grandeur purposes. As embedded devices are typically specialpurpose, constrained by less memory, less display area, and low processing power, the demand for resource-sharing among a dynamic pool of embedded devices goes up sharply and this s being touted as an important factor and feature in the enlightened embedded space. Extreme connectivity aspects zoom these days and thereby diverse, distributed and decentralized devices are getting increasingly connected directly or indirectly and to web, grid, and eve cloud systems. Several product vendors and industry consortiums have come out with myriad standards for distinct devices to interoperate for conceiving and constructing people-centric, real-time and dynamic services. In a nutshell, device heterogeneity and multiplicity in any specific or generic environments lead to the unwanted complexity. Hence the moot and major question in everyones mind is how to displace and delegate the growing complexity as it is well-known that the complexity cannot be eliminated out rightly. The implicit and impending challenge therefore before both researchers as well as practitioners is to enable dynamic and deft interactions among the embedded systems so that the vision of establishing smart and green spaces is greatly quickened and guaranteed. Currently the most vaunted and viable method
14

ISSN: 2231-1998 2011, Heber Publications, www.ijctis.com

Cloud-based Greener and Smarter Service Environments

Pethuru Raj

for arriving at smart and green homes is the prominent and dominant centralized and boxbased approach. It is however found that this approach ultimately would lead to more complexity putting breaks and barriers in implicitly accommodating unpredictable and unplanned changes and furthering innovations. Also the box can be a single point of failure. This has in turn pinpointed and propelled professionals and pundits to ponder about some viable and veritable alternatives. The emerging cloud technology is being found favorable and incredible in the minds of many to be an extremely good fit for saying goodbye to smart homes and for welcoming smarter homes. The core principles behind smarter homes are: 1. Displacing and Delegating the restraining Complexity 2. Accommodating unforeseen Changes 3. Facilitating Innovation such as open business model 4. Enhancing Consumability through Intuitive Interfaces We would like to insist how the transformative and disruptive cloud computing is to lead to smarter homes that effectively safeguard and seal the improved care, convenience, choice, safety and security of the homes occupants, constituents and participants. Due to the unprecedented success in absorbing huge market and mind shares, cloud providers and professionals are individually and collectively putting cloud infrastructures, platforms and frameworks in place for simplifying and streamlining the complex and time-consuming tasks of developing, debugging, deploying, and delivering a spectrum of on-demand, enterprise-scale, secure, and dynamic services and applications over the ubiquitous web. For cloud-based service delivery to multiple tenants concurrently, the most matured method is to have an efficient service delivery platform (SDP) in the cloud. As services are being increasingly posited in clouds, the availability, auditability, accountability and accessibility are being comprehensively made simpler and the vision is to ensure worldwide developers, innovators, and enthusiasts to come out with peoplecentric, pragmatic and premium services and applications to be remotely hosted and expertly managed, incredibly affordable and

eminently adaptive.

2. Why the Cloud Paradigm for Smarter Environments?

Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and others have built flexible and futuristic architectures for their data and process-intensive applications and infrastructures to meet the varying needs of a wider variety of people across the world. They through their experience and expertise have taught the rest of the world how to arrive at massively scalable architectures to support next-generation professional as well as personal IT systems and solutions. Cloud computing started its long and lustrous innings from here. Having understood its spectacular and sparkling benefits, several types of cloud providers came onto to the competitive scene in order to look out for potential avenues for high-margin and sustainable revenues. Innovators, individuals, and institutions are all convinced about its impeccable and instant successes and are steadily moving their onpremise and locally managed compute resources (services, applications, and hardware resources such as compute, memory, storage, network etc.) to centrally provisioned, virtualised and shared infrastructures, which are being looked after by well-experienced experts. This transition helps to cut costs (capital and operational) and reach wider market instantaneously and insightfully. Clouds host an increasing array of business applications that can be accessed, manipulated and leveraged for greater purposes remotely and optimally [1]. The typical analogy is that the centralised electricity generation utilities by government and private entities. The transmission and distribution service providers come into picture and finally commoners can avail the required electricity for a small fee for the amount or duration of usage. In the similar way, the total compute facility as a cooperative and collaborative pool of consolidated, clustered, federated and high-performing servers is being put up in a centrally manned place to be actively monitored and maintained by those who are having the relevant and right education, experience and expertise. The
15

ISSN: 2231-1998 2011, Heber Publications, www.ijctis.com

Cloud-based Greener and Smarter Service Environments

Pethuru Raj

cloud center is capable of delivering an increasing array of people-centric services to worldwide users via the web affordably. And any subscriber can subscribe for the relevant and right amount of hardware as well as software at any point of time using any I/O device over the pervasive web. That is, cloud resources are very much similar to utility-like resources that inherently and instinctively support the vaunted plug and play paradigm. In a single stroke, all sorts of infrastructural and usage complexities are displaced and delegated into experienced hands. The resounding success attributed to the cloud idea is not only due to the extra abstraction obtained but also common people can easily find, and access the growing list of cloud services, applications, data, and other resources immediately using any web-enabled handheld, fixed, wireless and wearable I/O devices from any pat of the world at any point of time. Cloud computing is a solid fulfillment of the Suns vision of network computing and the utility computing paradigm chips in constructively for the uninhibited growth of clouds. The much-discoursed and deliberated cloud paradigm brings to the table an altogether different business, pricing, delivery and consumption model, which is significantly deviating from the conventional model. Entrepreneurs, professionals, executives, employees and commoners etc can make use of varying cloud resources in innumerable ways. Cloud is interestingly elastic, Internetbased, global scale, and people-centric. That is, the service science is blooming and bustling these days with the maturity being attained in the various aspects and concepts of clouds that are the next-generation service infrastructure. Further on, disciplines such as service engineering, enablement, delivery, metering, billing, monitoring, management, governance, security etc. are evolving fast so that cloud-sponsored service era is to flower and flourish. That is, all the existing and enabling ICT infrastructures are being readied and rented out to a variety of providers as well as individuals for hosting their professional as well as personal applications, services, and content. Increasingly IT development,

maintenance, and enhancement tasks are being slowly yet steadily shifted to large-scale, energy-efficient, compliant, impenetrable and unbreakable cloud centers. Not only hardware but also all kinds of software engineering frameworks, integrated development environments, testing suites, software containers, integration middleware, and delivery platforms are finding their residence in newly established clouds. In a nutshell, cloud is the most sought-after, hot, and nextgeneration data centers and server farms. By making services and data available in the cloud, they can be more easily and ubiquitously accessed, often at much lower cost. This conscious shift sharply increases their value by facilitating fresh opportunities for enhanced collaboration, integration, and analysis on a shared common platform. Consumability gets strengthened with the simplicity gained through this transition to clouds. At its heart, cloud computing is a new operational and business model for IT application hosting and delivery through the important differentiator such as multi-tenancy.

3. A Perspective View on Smart Homes and Buildings

Trendsetting and trailblazing computing, communication, and context-awareness (via ubiquitous and real-time sensing, vision, perception, analysis, and actuation techniques) technologies are forthcoming. On the infrastructural front, a variety of converged and autonomic ICT infrastructures emerging and evolving for hosting and delivering adaptive, real-time, and on-demand ICT services and applications to worldwide users. Processes are too going through a number of noteworthy transformations so that we can have integrated yet lean processes for IT services and applications. Service orientation has taken the whole IT industry through a storm and the result is really momentous. Another conspicuous trend is that there are newer and nimbler disruptive, transformative, and imaginative automation elements in the form of elegant and endearing devices, slim and sleek handhelds, invisible sensors, multifaceted actuators, versatile robots,
16

ISSN: 2231-1998 2011, Heber Publications, www.ijctis.com

Cloud-based Greener and Smarter Service Environments

Pethuru Raj

intuitive displays, etc. getting quickly instrumented in massive volumes. They are being made available affordably and are disposable, disappearing, and distinctive. There is a positive buzz on purposeful, realtime and ad hoc interconnectivity of these distributed and disparate gadgets and gizmos. There are several types of specific as well as general network topologies and technologies unfolding based on the varying ranges of network coverage. Mesh networking is another inspiring development catapulting IT to greater heights. Establishing enlightened and smart environments is simplified with the arrival of potential and promising technologies such as Competent service development, deployment and delivery technologies (XML, SOAP and RESTful Services) Industry-strength device integration standards (Zigbee, Bluetooth, OSGi, USB, UPnP, Zwave, DLNA, HAVi, HAVC, DPWS, etc.) Facilitating frameworks (Sedona Framework, SIRENA, SOCREDES, Hydra, Altra, Amigo, Atlas, .NET Micro Framework, etc) Novel devices types such as implantables (Sensors, cameras, actuators, etc.), fixed, portables, mobiles, wearables, handhelds, appliances, utensils, instruments, machines, displays, gadgets, gizmos, etc. Robust, Resilient and Reflective Middleware, Infrastructure and Platforms such as buses, engines, fabrics, clusters, containers, grids, clouds, etc. Promising and potential technologies abounding for smooth transition of ordinary, everyday, and common objects into digitalised and cognition-enabled artifacts to formally join with the device ecosystem to contribute for smart environments In a nutshell, it is all about quickly and easily creating active, assistive, agile and adaptive environments for intelligently bringing in muchwanted care, convenience, choice, comfort and control for humans in their everyday environments, Smart homes and buildings are the most endeared phenomenon in the class of smart environments. Researchers have come out with a number of interesting applications emanating out of smart homes and buildings.

Prominent Use Cases of Smart Homes: The following use cases are being the prominent ones. More and more compound applications are realized by intelligently combining discrete use cases. Elderly Care / Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) / Pervasive Healthcare / Wellness Ease of use of home devices and services via intuitive, adaptive, and natural interfaces Home Security, Personal Privacy & Physical Security Remote Monitoring, Manipulation and Management of home automation elements, devices, instruments, machines, utensils, digitalized artefacts and electronics Green and Sustainable Homes & Buildings through optimal and shared usage of power energy Home Infotainment, Entertainment and edutainment Enhanced comfort, convenience, choice, and control Applications Smart Home Elements: A growing variety of smart sensors, systems, services and solutions are set to decorate our future homes. That is, homes are to be extremely technology-sponsored and splurged. Home appliances, utensils, and gadgets are being empowered to talk with each other. That is, common, casual and cheap objects are being networked as well as web-enabled and are empowered with relevant and right capabilities through the internal as well as external incorporation of additional electronic modules and through resource-sharing with their neighbors. All kinds of divisiveness are getting eliminated through a host of measures such as standardization, adaptors, bridges, middleware, common APIs, etc. Plug and play capabilities is being guaranteed. Both today as well as tomorrows devices are manufactured and modernized to connect and collaborate with one another in realizing people-centric tasks. The growing and glowing list of prominent home automation solutions includes: Security and Surveillance Artifacts: Security sensors for windows, doors, motion, glass break, and smoke can provide critical security
17

ISSN: 2231-1998 2011, Heber Publications, www.ijctis.com

Cloud-based Greener and Smarter Service Environments

Pethuru Raj

information about our homes while at home or in office. IP-enabled surveillance cameras are very important for ensuring tight, unbreakable and impenetrable security. Intrusion detection and prevention systems are other prominent security systems. Heating, Air Condition, Ventilation, Lighting and Shade Control Systems: Comfort is emerging as the decisive factor in nextgeneration homes. Novel machines are being instrumented to take care of different 17 environmental conditions. Connectivity among various home-bound devices including light switches, wall-mounted touch panels, etc. is being ensured. Computing and Communication: A wider variety of compute machines ranging from PC, notebook, laptop, personal digital assistant (PDA), and smart phones are being bought and used in home environments these days. With the seamless convergence, computer and communicator are often interchanged. Entertainment, Edutainment, and Infotainment Media Systems: There are several notable innovations in media technologies and products. Out of that, today we boast about fixed, portable, mobile and handheld devices for ubiquitous learning. IP-enabled television sets are being produced in mass quantities sharply increasing our choice, convenience, and comfort considerably. Web, information and consumer appliances are mass-produced. Web 2.0 technologies are on the climb facilitating higher productivity for humans and for forming digital communities for real-time knowledge sharing. Home theaters, hi-fi music systems, DVD devices, game consoles etc. are for entertainment. Home Networking: All passive, numb and dumb items are getting transformed into digitalized and smart objects. These are being wirelessly networked with all sorts of household electronics in order to connect and communicate to derive competent e-services. Home networking infrastructures, connectivity solutions, bridging elements, and other brokering solutions are being found more in numbers these days. Home network also can connect with the outside world via the pervasive Internet. This enables remote

monitoring, management, and maintenance of home devices. Car multimedia, navigation systems, care and parking management systems, etc too gets connected to household systems directly or via a box-based middleware for real-time connectivity and interaction. Environment Monitoring, Selfand Surroundings-Awareness: Sensors, RFID tags, labels, stickers, smart dust & motes, tags, pads, chips etc. are capable of garnering contextual information to give actionable insights for decision-makers and knowledge and rule engines to enable actuators to accomplish the needs. Kitchen Appliances & Utensils: Modular kitchen comprising all kinds of electronics emerges as a vital factor for smart homes. Coffee makers, bread toasters, electronic ovens, refrigerators, dish washers, etc are being enhanced to be a contributing participants in the home environment. Relaxing and Mood-creating Objects: Lamps, Cots, chairs, beds, wardrobes, window panes, couches, treadmills, tables, and sofas besides the objects in specific places such as gyms, spas, bath rooms, car garages, etc are being linked together in order to greatly enhance the experience of users. Healthcare and Wellness Systems: Medicine cabinets, pills and tablets containers, humanoid robots, etc. are occupying prime slots in guaranteeing appropriate health for home occupants. 3.1. Establishing Futuristic Homes Remarkable advancements and accomplishments such as broadband communication, mesh networking, service orientation, streams of home automation systems, and resilient home integration middleware enable the realization of smart homes. However the current trend is the proven centralised approach through a home server / controller / gateway. That is, the boxbased central approach dominates the current smart homes. There are several device integration standards coming up for adoption
18

ISSN: 2231-1998 2011, Heber Publications, www.ijctis.com

Cloud-based Greener and Smarter Service Environments

Pethuru Raj

by device manufacturers. Besides that, there are device middleware that unite a specific set of devices together to enable them talk spontaneously. The Figure 1 vividly illustrates the currently dominating practice of leveraging standardsbased integration middleware for linking household devices and with the outside world via the Internet. The middleware is being deployed in a home-bound device and is called home integration device or box (HID). The complexity is getting pushed into the home integration box and this in due course of time with the addition of newer and nimbler devices adds more severe complexity. Hence the logical move is to delegate and dissipate the obstructive complexity to the Web-based cloud servers. This new cloud paradigm opens up innumerable ways and means for inventive services which build on the computational power and scalability of the cloud along with the collective consumer knowledge. Data which is aggregated then stored in the cloud can provide dramatic and disruptive insights about consumer needs and behaviour. Ultimately, this facilitates a host of unforeseen possibilities and opportunities, from radically improving the performance of current devices and services, to delivering benefits which have not yet even been considered. With cloud technology, consumers do not need to have

knowledge of, expertise in, or mastery and control over the technology infrastructure in the cloud. Open source platforms / software development toolkits (SDKs) and newer business models such as mobile application stores are unleashing the creativity of an increasingly large number of application writers. Today there are more than 100000 applications available for the Apple iPhone users. The Android platform by Google is also seeing the same frenzy. Smart phones today have become the center of attraction for such kinds of nimbler service delivery and consumption models. As the Internet is evolving and diversifying fast, consumers prefer sophisticated and smart services and products to be delivered from web-based service delivery platforms (SDPs). At the same time, consumers are demanding more quality and intuitive interfaces for the solutions being offered. It is hence logical to explore and experiment the cloud technology for futuristic mobile and embedded devices. As discussed above, home/building integration devices will become hot in the days to come. Developers can do the same for implementing a bevy of everyday services and applications for home users. The prominent application domains include home entertainment/ infotainment/edutainment, energy optimization, enablement of people towards taking appropriate and timely decisions, etc.

Figure 1. The Centralised and Box-based Approach for Smart Homes ISSN: 2231-1998 2011, Heber Publications, www.ijctis.com 19

Cloud-based Greener and Smarter Service Environments

Pethuru Raj

How Cloud enables Smarter and Greener Homes? - A more effective approach is to connect the devices to services in the cloud as pictorially represented in Figure 2. This enables the centralisation of services. Putting the relevant intelligence into services in the cloud reduces the complexity of managing software in the home integration devices and simplifies the interoperability of devices. This is accomplished by bridging the services throughout the network through services interfaces, translating the different device protocols to a common platform, then connecting the devices through the cloud. This is a far less expensive and more flexible way to aggregate services and compose newer services. This takes the complexity out of the connected devices in the home. The consumer moves from being the IT manager of their home to a consumer of services through their connected devices. A local services clone or services cache in a home device can safeguard the availability of services against any network outage problems and guarantee the availability of high quality services with a simple control by the consumers. With new cloud-based services, new possibilities emerge ceaselessly for all kinds of home devices and appliances. Consider a pool pump or refrigerator. If it has

the ability to sense and respond to changing conditions, to communicate with other near and far off systems, and to participate in the decision-making process, fresh opportunities are bound to erupt and shine. Cloud technology creates an ideal environment for an intelligent, highly efficient and highly flexible utility approach to services in the network [2]. At the hardware level, it enables the flexible, dynamic, and low-touch provisioning of resources to applications. The creation of virtual service images supports the easy lifecycle management and deployment of services. Finally, standardized interfaces to the services enable the dynamic composition of individual services into flexible solutions in a plug-and-play mode. The services clone can directly interact with services in the network, in effect becoming a part of the cloud. This clone can function as a limited and local replica of some fundamental and foundational services, delivering control even in the case of a network failure. It can also ease the connection of home devices to the network by translating protocols and acting as traffic concentrator. The ability to adapt any type of network and application protocols increases the choice of devices and services for consumers.

HID

Emergency Manager

Cloud 2
HID Service Delivery Platform (SDP) + Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) + Cloud Broker + Application Store

HID

Fire / Police Station

HID Enterprise 2.0

Web 2.0

Figure 2. The Conceptual Architecture for Smarter Homes & Buildings

ISSN: 2231-1998 2011, Heber Publications, www.ijctis.com

20