What is Cloud Computing? It is a new paradigm to deliver computing applications or computing processing power as a service rather than as a product. Users of cloud computing do not need to buy additional computer or software, instead they make subscription to a computing service. For example, people subscribe to a photo album service from Flickr or use the storage service provided by Dropbox.

Google, Amazon, Microsoft and many service providers have turned their huge infrastructure into a cloud computing environment and are aggressively recruiting businesses to run applications on their platforms. Many top-tier IT vendors have been promoting cloud computing as a new service model. This lecture will explain this new computing paradigm, and discuss its impactand different understandings of this technology. Apart from a general introduction, security and privacy issues of cloud computing will also be discussed. Serious concern has been raised, and corporate users would need to protect their data running on the cloud computing platform from the “untrusted” service provider. Observations and some research findings will be covered.

“Serendipity” is a 2001 romantic comedy in which the two leading characters met by chance and changed their destiny. In science and industry, a lot of important discoveries and useful invention are thought also due to serendipity that is, discovering things you did not intend to (like penicillin, rubber, Post-it, etc). Recently computer scientists begin to realize that there are many relationships and coincident events that are not down to chance alone. The process that new knowledge can be discovered and accelerated from the mining of what seemingly unrelated information and patterns is a fascinating and challenging research. Success of chance discovery depends on the dynamic clustering and interactions of a huge amount of human, physical and digital resources.

The emerging Cloud Computing Platform not only provides a flexible and scalable computing and storage resource, but also revolutionizes how new business and services can be created and delivered. Knowledge will also be delivered as a core service (KaaS). The higher form of service and business innovation calls for intensive social interaction, openness and collaboration. Nowadays, innovation is no longer confined within an enterprise or done solely in-house. Open innovation draws on both internal and external knowledge of an organization to develop new business products, solutions and services. More companies are systematizing serendipity in the internet as an important factor in innovation. Typical examples include Crowdsourcing and Cloud Marketplace, etc. The widespread application of Cloud Service Environment enables exchange of data among suppliers, employees and clients and which at the same time generates various information and social network that pave the way for unprecedented opportunities for open innovation.