A group of BSC IT and Computer Science students at the University of Malta, who have participated in Microsoft’s Imagine Cup competition held over the past week in Poland, yesterday received training on cloud computing – one of the latest internet technologies.

This technology is currently being rolled out in the US as well as countries in central and eastern Europe. Although it is not yet available in Malta, it has been deployed in 41 countries. The infiltration of the concept is meant to happen worldwide, however it is happening gradually and eventually Malta will be included in the process.

The students, all in second-year at University, were given an overview of the cloud concept and the starting point of an application implementation was shown in practice. On their return to Malta, they will be sharing this information with student colleagues. A presentation on their experience in the Imagine Cup Competition for future competitors will also be given over the coming months with the help of Microsoft Malta Developer Platform Evangelist, Karl Davies-Barrett.

Cloud computing is internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand, like the electricity grid.

‘Cloud’ is the style of computing in which functionality [computer (applications) & storage (data)] is provided as a service over the internet or over an internal/external, location-transparent, centralised facility. No elaborate construction or development programme is needed to implement such technology as existing data centres, built to support the likes of Amazon and Microsoft, can rent spare capacity, creating a collection of services that provide the illusion of infinite computing power and storage on tap.

This computing technology is a paradigm shift following that from mainframe to client-server in the early 1980s. Details are abstracted from the users, who no longer have need for expertise in, or control over, the technology infrastructure ‘in the cloud’ that supports them. Cloud computing describes a new supplement, consumption, and delivery model for IT services based on the Internet, and it typically involves over-the-Internet provision of dynamically scalable (rendering services fast) and often virtualised resources. It is a by-product and consequence of the ease-of-access to remote computing sites provided by the internet.

Meanwhile, the students showcased a project they developed for Imagine Cup, and which classified among the top 12 projects selected from among those submitted by 68 countries. They created a system by which doctors in developed countries share information with healthcare volunteers in third world countries giving solutions for dermatological diseases, providing for better quality of life and reducing mortality rates.

The education ministry’s representative Mario Azzopardi, director of the Lifelong Learning programme who attended the Education Leaders Forum in Warsaw over the past two days as well as the Ambassador for Malta in Poland Godwin Montanaro also visited the students congratulating them for their success and encouraging them to work further on their system and seek support from public as well as private entities. A number of judges also took time to give them detailed feedback on their work during the showcase.

A figure of cloud computing is available on: http://www.azurepilot.com/page/Introduction+to+Cloud+Computing