A Sophisticated Ad Hoc Cloud Computing Environment Built by the Migration of a Server to Facilitate Distributed Collaboration

A sophisticated ad hoc cloud computing environment (SpACCE) providing calculation capacity of PCs is proposed to facilitate distributed collaboration. Distributed collaboration is now indispensable in daily work and mainly occurs ad hoc in offices and laboratories. However, computer resources in offices and laboratories are under-utilized, while conventional cloud computing environments composed of dedicated servers are not suited to flexibly deploying applications ad hoc. A SpACCE can be built according to the needs that occur at any given time on a set of personal, i.e., non-dedicated, PCs and dynamically migrate a server for application sharing to another PC. CollaboTray, an application-sharing system, indispensable to share any application without modification, is employed to realize the migration of a server. By migrating a server, the redundant calculation capacity of PCs used for individual work can be utilized to produce a sophisticated ad hoc cloud computing environment, where the response time of the application shared among the users is improved. The level of calculation capacity required to execute the migration of a server and the effectiveness of the migration were clarified by building a SpACCE in a university research room.