A novel "credit union" model of cloud computing

Abstract

Cloud Computing is drawing people's attention from all walks of the IT world. It promises significant reduction of cost among many other advantages as it proclaims, including increased availability, fast provision, on-demand, and pay-per-use, etc. This paper presents a novel model of Cloud Computing, named "Credit Union" model (referred to as the CU model or CUM for short). This model is motivated by the cooperative business model of the many credit unions that have been widely practiced as a type of financial institutions world-wide. The CU model aims at utilizing the vast, underutilized computing resources in homes and offices, and transforming them into a self-provisioned community cloud that mimics the business model of a credit union, i.e., membership and credits are obtained by contributing spare computing resources. Clouds built based on the CU model, referred to as CU clouds, bear the following advantageous characteristics comparing to the general clouds: complete vendor independence, improved availability (due to reduced internet-dependence), better security, and superb sustainability (green computing). This paper expounds the principles and motivations of the CU model, addresses its implementation architecture and related issues, and outlooks prospect applications. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.