A User Perspective on Cloud Computing

Current service cloud models can be easily seen as application-centered: they provide an access point to services and artifacts but, including them as separate resources, they do not offer a unified and cross-application perspective on users' activities. As an answer to this issue, we present a user-centered cloud model which, by enabling services to synchronize on a unified context, enhances users' interaction with Web 2.0 applications within the service cloud. The underlying infrastructure of our model can handle shared data and activities involving multiple services, providing a unified, cross-application workspace awareness support. This shared context supports the management of flexible and extensible collaboration environments.