Abstract
Cloud Computing is among the fastest growing topics in computing research. Although the idea of offering computational power as a service is not novel, it did not publically become available before Clouds. Clouds are fundamentally different from their ancestors (Grids/Clusters) and thus require specific expertise to be properly utilized. This talk will first focus on the concepts of Cloud Computing as a whole and differentiates it from its ancestors. The second focus on this talk is to introduce current challenges in the clouds through listing those that are common with other parallel platforms and those that are exclusive to clouds. The third focus of this talk is to represent current solutions to some of these challenges. The fourth focus is to highlight possible directions for future clouds and how they are going to even revolutionise our computing paradigms.

Biography
Albert Y. ZOMAYA is currently the Chair Professor of High Performance Computing & Networking and Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow in the School of Information Technologies, The University of Sydney. He is also the Director of the Centre for Distributed and High Performance Computing which was established in late 2009. Professor Zomaya is the author/co-author of seven books, more than 400 papers, and the editor of nine books and 11 conference proceedings. He is the Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Computers and serves as an associate editor for 19 leading journals. Professor Zomaya is the recipient of the Meritorious Service Award (in 2000) and the Golden Core Recognition (in 2006), both from the IEEE Computer Society. Also, he received the IEEE TCPP Outstanding Service Award and the IEEE TCSC Medal for Excellence in Scalable Computing, both in 2011. Professor Zomaya is an ACM Distinguished Speaker, a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow of AAAS, IEEE, IET (U.K.), and a Distinguished Engineer of the ACM.