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Cloud computing offers new opportunities for technical professionals as businesses are moving beyond saving costs with infrastructure and beginning to build applications to innovate in the cloud.

While 40% of respondents indicated that their organization is not currently engaged in cloud computing, the vast majority (75%) of respondents believe that over the next two years their organizations will begin to build cloud infrastructure. IT professionals predict developing new applications will be the top cloud adoption activity in the next 24 months, overtaking the current top investment areas of virtualization and storage. This finding suggests that cloud is becoming more entrenched in the technical landscape as more and more organizations move from building cloud infrastructure to taking advantage of it with new services and business models. What's more, as mobile usage proliferates, so should the use of cloud. The survey uncovered a strong link between the adoption of mobile and cloud. 51% of respondents cited the adoption of cloud technologies as part of their mobile strategy. Mobile usage increases the amount of transactions, while cloud enables the flexibility and cost-effectiveness to handle demand surges.

The top motivators for adopting cloud continue to revolve around the notion of doing more with less. Close to 60% of respondents cited flexibility and scalability as the top motivators for embracing cloud technology. IT professionals are also motivated to make a positive impact on their organization's bottom line, citing reduced operating expenses and capital as two other top motivators for embracing cloud.

Intel Labs has announced two new Intel Science and Technology Centers (ISTC) hosted at Carnegie Mellon University focused on cloud and embedded computing research.

Aimed at shaping the future of cloud computing and how increasing numbers of everyday devices will add computing capabilities, Intel Labs announced the latest Intel Science and Technology Centers (ISTC) both headquartered at Carnegie Mellon University.

These centers represent the next $30 million installment of Intel's recently announced 5-year, $100 million ISTC program to increase university research and accelerate innovation in a handful of key areas. As with previously announced ISTCs for visual computing and secure computing, the new centers encourage tighter collaboration between university thought leaders and Intel. To encourage further collaboration, the ISTCs use open IP models with results publically available through technical publications and open-source software releases.

"These new ISTCs are expected to open amazing possibilities," said Justin Rattner, Intel Chief Technology Officer. "Imagine, for example, future cars equipped with embedded sensors and microprocessors to constantly collect and analyze traffic and weather data. That information could be shared and analyzed in the cloud so that drivers could be provided with suggestions for quicker and safer routes."

Cloud computing research
The ISTC forms a new cloud computing research community that broadens Intel's "Cloud 2015" vision with new ideas from top academic researchers, and includes research that extends and improves on Intel's existing cloud computing initiatives. The center combines top researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of California Berkeley, Princeton University, and Intel. The researchers will explore technology that will have has important future implications for the cloud, including built-in application optimization, more efficient and effective support of big data analytics on massive amounts of online data, and making the cloud more distributed and localized by extending cloud capabilities to the network edge and even to client devices.

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