This article is taken from:

Encyclopedia of Cloud Computing ©Wiley 2016

By San Murugesan and Irena Bojanova

Clouds are powerful change‐agents and enablers. Several converging and complementary factors are driving the rise of cloud computing. The increasing maturity of cloud technologies and cloud service offerings coupled with users’ greater awareness of the cloud’s benefits (and limitations) is accelerating the cloud’s adoption. Better Internet connectivity, intense competition among cloud service providers (CSPs), and digitalization of enterprises, particularly micro‐, small‐, and medium‐sized businesses, are increasing the clouds’ use.

Cloud computing is changing the way people and enterprises use computers and their work practices, as well as how companies and governments deploy their computer applications. It will drastically improve access to information for all as well as cut IT costs. It redefines not only the information and communication technology (ICT) industry but also enterprise IT in all industry and business sectors. It is also driving innovations by small enterprises and facilitating deployment of new applications that would otherwise be infeasible.

The introduction of new cloud computing platforms and applications, and the emergence of open standards for cloud computing will boost cloud computing’s appeal to both cloud providers and users.  Furthermore, clouds will enable open‐source and freelance developers to deploy their applications in the clouds and profit from their developments. As a result, more open‐source software will be published in the cloud. Clouds will also help close the digital divide prevalent in emerging and underdeveloped economies and may help save our planet by providing a greener computing environment.

Cloud Ecosystem

In order to embrace the cloud successfully  and harness its power for traditional and new kinds of applications, we must recognize the features and promises of one or more of the three foundational cloud services – software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and infrastructure as a service (IaaS). We must also understand and properly address other aspects such as security, privacy, access management, compliance requirements, availability, and functional continuity in case of cloud failure. Furthermore, adopters need to learn how to architect cloud‐based systems that meet their specific requirements. We may have to use cloud services from more than one service provider, aggregate those services, and integrate them on premises’ legacy systems or applications.

To assist cloud users in their transition to the cloud, a broader cloud ecosystem is emerging that aims to offer a spectrum of new cloud support services to augment, complement, or assist the foundational SaaS, IaaS, and PaaSofferings. Examples of such services are security as a service, identity management as a service, and data as a service. Investors, corporations, and startups are eagerly investing in promising cloud computing technologies and services in developed and developing countries. Many startups and established companies continue to enter into the cloud arena offering a variety of cloud products and services, and individuals and businesses around the world are increasingly adopting cloud‐based applications. Governments are promoting cloud adoption, particularly among micro, small, and medium enterprises. Thus, a new larger cloud ecosystem is emerging.

Addressing the Challenges and Concerns

While hailing the features of existing and emerging new cloud services that help users adopt and tailor the services they use according to their needs, it is important to recognize that the cloud ecosystem still presents a few challenges and concerns. Such concerns are those relating to performance interoperability, the quality of service of the entire cloud chain, compliance with regulatory requirements and standards, security and privacy of data, access control and management, trust, and service failures and their impact. All these issues need to be addressedinnovatively, and this calls for collaboration among various players in the cloud ecosystem.

Good news is that investors, established corporations, and startups are eagerly investing in promising cloud computing technologies and services, and are willing to collaborate (to an extent) to raise the clouds to newer heights. We can hope for a brighter, bigger, more collaborative cloud ecosystem that benefits all of its stakeholders and society at large. Cloud service providers, the IT industry, professional and industry associations, governments, and IT professionals all have a role to play in shaping, fostering, and harnessing the full potential of the emerging cloud ecosystem.

Gaining Cloud Computing Knowledge

To better understand and exploit the potential of the cloud – and to advance the cloud further – practitioners, IT professionals, educators, researchers, and students need an authoritative knowledge source that comprehensively and holistically covers all aspects of cloud computing.

Several books on cloud computing are now available  but none of them cover all key aspects of cloud computing comprehensively and meet the information needs of IT professionals, academics, researchers, and undergraduate and postgraduate students. To gain a holistic view of the cloud, one has to refer to a few different books, which is neither convenient nor practicable.

The new Encyclopedia of Cloud Computing, edited by us and published by IEEE Computer Society and Wiley this month, serves this need. It contains a wealth of information for those interested in understanding, using, or providing cloud computing services;  for developers and researchers who are interested in advancing cloud computing and businesses, and for individuals interested in embracing and capitalizing on the cloud. In this encyclopedia, we offer a holistic and comprehensive view of the cloud from different perspectives.

Caterpillar Safety Systems has partnered with Seeing Machines to install fatigue protection software in thousands of mining trucks. According to a Huffington Post report, the software uses a camera, speaker and light system to measure signs of fatigue – for instance eye closure and head position. When a potential fatigue event is detected, the system sounds an alarm and sends a video clip of the driver to a 24-hour sleep fatigue center at Caterpillar headquarters, the report adds.

The following article is obtained from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/caterpillar-sleep-fatigue-center_us_577d4c2ce4b0a629c1ab9b58

by Krithika Varagur

Associate Editor, The Huffington Post

Don’t forget to click the links because they come with useful information.

Why A Mining Company Is Getting Into Face Recognition Software

Drowsy driving is notoriously tough to detect. There’s no test to prove it, the way a breathalyzer can prove someone was driving drunk. But technology to detect drowsy driving is in the works.

In commercial transport, one industry is leading the way: mining. The stakes are particularly high in this field since the enormous haul trucks used in mining are several times the height of a person. Imagine dozing off at the wheel of one of these.

Caterpillar Safety Services, a consultancy branch of the global mining company, has partnered with the tech company Seeing Machines to put fatigue detection software in thousands of mining trucks around the world. The software uses a camera, speaker and light system to measure signs of fatigue like eye closure and head position. When a potential “fatigue event” is detected, the system sounds an alarm in the truck and sends a video clip of the driver to a 24-hour “sleep fatigue center” at Caterpillar headquarters in Peoria, Illinois.

At that point, a safety advisor contacts them via radio, notifies their site manager, and sometimes recommends a sleep intervention.

“This system automatically scans for the characteristics of microsleep in a driver,” Sal Angelone, a fatigue consultant at the company, told The Huffington Post, referencing the brief, involuntary pockets of unconsciousness that are highly dangerous to drivers. “But this is verified by a human working at our headquarters in Peoria.”

Caterpillar has a four-year license from Seeing Machines to manufacture the software. For now, it’s the exclusive provider of this technology within the mining industry. Some 5,000 vehicles ― a combination of Caterpillar’s own trucks and those of other mining companies ― carry the equipment. There are about 38,000 haul trucks worldwide, by Caterpillar’s estimate, so the fatigue-detecting trucks are still a small fraction of that, but Caterpillar hopes to eventually equip all of them.

When a “fatigue event” is recorded, it’s up to the mining site to recommend a course of action to the driver, or vice versa. Last month in Nevada, for instance, a mining truck driver had three fatigue events within four hours; he was contacted onsite and essentially forced to take a nap. Last February in North Carolina, one night shift truck driver who experienced a fatigue event realized it was a sign of an underlying sleep disorder and asked his site management for medical assistance. (Caterpillar has mining operations globally from China to Canada).

“It’s not unusual for someone to lose their frame of reference of what is normal in regard to fatigue,” said Angelone. This may be because miners’ shift work goes against typical human circadian rhythms. A driver’s shift is either eight or twelve hours long, said Angelone, but those shifts can occur during the middle of the night, late afternoon or any other time.

“Many sites run a 24/7 operation,” he said. “These drivers are not always sleeping through the night.”

In the past year, since the company started recording fatigue events last July, it has recorded about 600 instances, said Angelone. He said this constitutes a stunning 80 percent reduction in fatigue events from previous years.

The biggest reason for this, said Angelone, is that once an alarm goes off in a truck, the driver becomes much more aware of their fatigue, and is more cautious and proactive about drowsy driving than they would be otherwise.

These results invite the question of why fatigue detection software has not yet reached consumer vehicles.

One explanation is that the car industry has not been slow to embrace the technology, but that commercial trucking has been particularly fast.

“There is a lot of incentive to improve safety in our industry,” said Tim Crane, general manager of Caterpillar Safety Services. “Our vehicles are huge and pose unique challenges, so the government really wants to see that we’re trying.”

Crane expects the use of fatigue detection technology in consumer cars to increase “exponentially” in the next few years. Jeremy Terpstra of Seeing Machines echoed the sentiment.

“We have arrangements with many different car manufacturers,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time before this technology is in all vehicles, everywhere.”