A "No Data Center" Solution to Cloud Computing

Current Cloud Computing is primarily based on proprietary data centers, where hundreds of thousands of dedicated servers are setup to host the cloud services. In addition to the huge number of dedicated servers deployed in data centers, there are billions of underutilized Personal Computers (PCs), usually used only for a few hours per day, owned by individuals and organizations worldwide. The vast untapped compute and storage capacities of the underutilized PCs can be consolidated as alternative cloud fabrics to provision broad cloud services, primarily infrastructure as a service. This approach, thus referred to as "no data center" approach, complements the data center based cloud provision model. In this paper, we present our opportunistic Cloud Computing system, called cuCloud, that runs on scavenged resources of underutilized PCs within an organization/community. Our system demonstrates that the "no data center" solution indeed works. Besides proving our concept, model, and philosophy, our experimental results are highly encouraging.