E-Commerce and Clusters...

[Rajkumar Buyya]

FYI, the message that I forward to TFCC Open Forum that might also
be of interest to Beowulf community...

Dear All,

There was a panel organised by Francis Lau from Hong Kong Uni. (in PDCAT'2000 
conference held in Hong Kong recently) on:

  "The Application of PDC/Clusters (Parallel and Distributed Computing) and 
  Technique in E-Commerce"

Panelists: K. Hwang (USC/USA), 
	   R. Buyya (Monash/Australia),
	   H. Shen (Griffith/Australia) 
	   T.Nakajima (Japan ), 
	   J. W. Lee (Hong Kong Business Man ??), and
	   F. Lau (Hong Kong U)
and all other participants.

It is interesting to see that the panel members have been drawn from 
distinct backgrounds: computer architects, system architects, 
  business experts, ....

Each panel members have been asked to make comment on the following questions:

  * What are/will be the major problems/issues in eCommerce? 
    How will or can PDC be applied to solve some of them?

  * Other than “Compute Power”, what else can PDC contribute to e-commerce?

  * How would/could the different forms of PDC (clusters, hyperclusters, 
   GRID,...) be applied to e-commerce?

  * Could you describe one hot research topic for PDC applying to e-commerce?
  
  * A killer e-commerce application for PDC ?

Each of them have expressed their own need of commerce. Prof. Hwang has pointed
out overall technologies, Prof. Shen has pointed out the use of PDC for data
mining,
Dr. Nakajima ? pointed out the use of distributed mobile devices for e-commerce,
Dr. Lee has expressed his concerned about what entrepreneurs think of e-commerce
infrastructures and servers. I have pointed out about "capacity planning for
large scale e-commerce" and how clusters (hyperclusters/grid) can help out
in meeting some of the challenges like salability, data-mining for cyber attacks
detection, high performance, and so on using an example of killer e-commerce
applications. For future information, please see:
  http://www.dgs.monash.edu.au/~rajkumar/talks/PDCAppEcommerce/

We plan to write a short article for "IEEE Internet Computing"
describing/pointing 
out all E-commerce  requirements from computational/server infrastructure point 
of view and how PDC/Clusters can help in meeting those challenges.

I would like seek comments/suggestions/discussion etc. from colleagues on the
discussion list for the above questions raised at the panel. You are also
welcome
to comment on my slides and also pointer to related works is welcome.

Please share your thoughts on:
  Can/Is E-commerce going to be a Killer App. for Clusters?

-- 
Best wishes,
Raj

PS: I also gave a talk on (in Hong Kong conference):
"Seamless, Scalable Computing from Desktops/Clusters to Global Computational 
Power Grids: Hype or Reality ?", for more info, browse:
  http://www.dgs.monash.edu.au/~rajkumar/talks/PDCATKeynote/