Message passing interface (MPI) has been widely used for implementing parallel and distributed applications. The emergence of cloud computing offers a scalable, fault-tolerant, on-demand al-ternative to traditional on-premise clusters. In this thesis, we investigate the possibility of adopt-ing the cloud platform as an alternative to conventional MPI-based solutions. We show that cloud platform can exhibit competitive performance and benefit the users of this platform with its fault-tolerant architecture and on-demand access for a robust solution. Extensive research is done to identify the difficulties of designing and implementing an MPI-like framework for Azure cloud platform. We present the details of the key components required for implementing such a framework along with our experimental results for benchmarking multiple basic operations of MPI standard implemented in the cloud and its practical application in solving well-known large-scale algorithmic problems.

In this study, the cloud platform Windows Azure has been targeted for test implementations of Geographical Information System (GIS) software in the form of map servers and tile caches. The map servers included were GeoServer, MapNik, MapServer and SharpMap, which together with the tile caches, GeoWebCache, MapCache and TileCache, were installed on Windows Azures three different virtual machine roles (Web, Worker and VM). Furthermore, different techniques for scalingapplications and internal role communication are presented, followed by four sets of performance tests. The performance tests attempt to highlight the differences in request times, how the different role sizes handle the load from the incoming requests, how the different role sizes handle many concurrent TCP-connections and how well the incoming requests are load balanced in between the worker roles. The test implementations showed that all map servers and tile caches were successfully installed in Azure, which leads to the conclusion that Windows Azure is suitable for hosting GIS software with similar installation requirements to the previously mentioned software. Four different approaches (Direct mapping, Public Internal Endpoints, Queue and Worker Role Request Broker) are presented showing how Azure allows different methods in order to scale the internal role communication as well as the external client requests. The performance tests provided somewhat inconclusive test results due to hardware limitations in the test setup. This made it difficult to draw concluding parallels between the final results and the expected values. Minor tendencies in performance gain can be seen when scaling the VM size as well as the number of VMs.

Mjukvara i datorer styr många viktiga funktioner i dagens samhälle och används i stor utsträckning för att kommunicera men även för att styra utrustning. För att mjukvara ska fungera tillförlitligt behöver den byggas korrekt och testas utförligt. För att uppnå tillförlitlighet kan en byggserver används för att automatiskt bygga och testa mjukvaran. Den här rapporten beskriver hur en prototyp av ett övervakningssystem för byggservrar skapats. Systemet sköter övervakningen genom en övervakningstjänst som hämtar information från en byggserver av typen CruiseControl.NET [10] och presenterar informationen på en webbportal. Informationen som hämtas ut från byggservern går från en hög abstraktionsnivå ner till minsta detalj som är baserad på loggfiler från bygget, med exempelvis information om kompileringsfel. Utvecklingen av övervakningssystemet har haft fokus på att göra det möjligt att använda molntjänster och på det sättet inte begränsa vart en byggserver finns placerad. En av de molntjänster som använts är Service Bus Relay [27] som hanterar kommunikationen mellan en övervakningstjänst och webbportalen. Webbportalen har utvecklats för att vara responsiv [34] för på så sätt stödja mobila enheter och ge användaren frihet att besöka webbportalen oavsett enhet. Webbportalen använder sig av en databas för att lagra informationen som bland annat möjliggör övervakning av flera byggservrar, och den välutvecklade användarhanteringen. Det har gjorts flera lärdomar, bland annat genom upptäckt av en bugg i Microsofts implementation av meddelandehanteringen i Service Bus Relay. / Software in computers control many important functions in today's society and are widely used for communication but also to control equipment. For the software to work reliably it needs to be built correctly and tested extensively. To achieve reliability, a build server can be used to automatically build and test the software. This report describes how a prototype of a monitoring system for the build servers was created. The system will be monitored by a monitoring service that retrieves information from a build server using the CruiseControl.NET [10] software. The information gathered by the monitoring service will be presented on a web portal. The information retrieved from build the server goes from a high level of abstraction down to the smallest detail that is based on the log files from the build server, for example, information about compilation errors. The development of the monitoring system has been focused on making it possible to use cloud services and thus not restrict where a build server is located. One of the cloud services used is the Service Bus Relay [27] that handles the communication between a monitoring service and the web portal. The web portal is developed to be responsive [34] and provide support for mobile devices which give the user the freedom to visit the web portal from whatever device. The web portal uses a database to store information which enables monitoring of multiple build servers. A well-developed user management system is used on the web portal which provides administrators with an effective tool for user management. There have been several lessons learned, including the discovery of a bug in the Microsoft implementation of message handling in the Service Bus Relay.

When selling a service to companies or individuals, it’s important to deliver what you sell. Currently, Softronic provides companies with a platform that provides different types of services. These services create opportunities to efficiently develop government functions in accordance with the Government’s action plan for e-governance. These services are hosted by using the cloud computing platform Microsoft Windows Azure. The services’ functionality is important for both Softronic and their customers’ businesses. To know early whether there is a problem or if there will be problems with the services, Softronic wanted to monitor one of these services with the help of an external monitoring service.   The aim of this thesis was to compare three different systems for monitoring cloud-based services, implement the most suitable one and develop an application for Windows 8 where customers can see the status of their message channel inside the service. The monitoring systems tested were chosen and judged according to Softronics needs and monitoring requirements. A monitoring service called New Relic was chosen for implementation. New Relic has support for most of the required features, and for the rest of the features, an application was developed. A Windows 8 application and a website were developed that show information about customers’ message channels, and a web service was developed to supply both of them with the data they need. / När man säljer en tjänst till ett företag eller privatpersoner är det viktigt att man levererar det man lovar. I dagsläget tillhandahåller Softronic en plattform med olika tjänster. Dessa tjänster hjälper till att skapa möjligheter för att lättare kunna utveckla myndigheters verksamhet enligt regeringens handlingsplan för e-förvaltning. Dessa tjänser är driftsatta i Microsofts molnplattform, Windows Azure.   Att dessa tjänser fungerar är kritiskt för både Softronic och deras kunder. För att kunna, i ett tidigt stadie, få reda på om det är problem med tjänsterna eller om det kommer bli problem med tjänsterna, ville Softronic övervaka en av dessa tjänster med en redan befintlig monitoreringstjänst.   Målet med detta examensarbete var att jämföra tre olika system för övervakning av moln-baserade tjänster för att slutligen implementera den bäst passande av de tre samt utveckla en applikation för Windows 8 där kunden kan se status på sin egen meddelandekanal. I arbetet har de valda applikationerna testats och bedömts efter Softronics behov och krav på övervakning. En monitoreringstjänst som heter New Relic valdes för implementation. New Relic har stöd för de flesta av de nödvändiga funktionerna, och för de resterande funktionerna utvecklades en applikation. En Windows 8-applikation och en websida utvecklades för att visualisera kunders meddelandekanaler, och en webbtjänst utvecklades för att förse båda dessa med den information de behöver.

Cloud computing is emerging as a promising platform for compute and data intensive scientific applications. Thanks to the on-demand elastic provisioning capabilities, cloud computing has instigated curiosity among researchers from a wide range of disciplines. However, even though many vendors have rolled out their commercial cloud infrastructures, the service offerings are usually only best-effort based without any performance guarantees. Utilization of these resources will be questionable if it can not meet the performance expectations of deployed applications. Additionally, the lack of the familiar development tools hamper the productivity of eScience developers to write robust scientific high performance computing (HPC) applications. There are no standard frameworks that are currently supported by any large set of vendors offering cloud computing services. Consequently, the application portability among different cloud platforms for scientific applications is hard. Among all clouds, the emerging Azure cloud from Microsoft in particular remains a challenge for HPC program development both due to lack of its support for traditional parallel programming support such as Message Passing Interface (MPI) and map-reduce and due to its evolving application programming interfaces (APIs). We have designed newer frameworks and runtime environments to help HPC application developers by providing them with easy to use tools similar to those known from traditional parallel and distributed computing environment set- ting, such as MPI, for scientific application development on the Azure cloud platform. It is challenging to create an efficient framework for any cloud platform, including the Windows Azure platform, as they are mostly offered to users as a black-box with a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) to access various service components. The primary contributions of this Ph.D. thesis are (i) creating a generic framework for bag-of-tasks HPC applications to serve as the basic building block for application development on the Azure cloud platform, (ii) creating a set of APIs for HPC application development over the Azure cloud platform, which is similar to message passing interface (MPI) from traditional parallel and distributed setting, and (iii) implementing Crayons using the proposed APIs as the first end-to-end parallel scientific application to parallelize the fundamental GIS operations.

Windows Azure Platform is product of the Microsoft company aimed to host web applications. With this product, Microsoft is reacting on the new trend in IT -- cloud computing. This diploma thesis deals with all the aspects of developing and running PHP applications on Windows Azure Platform. Thesis is divided into two parts -- theoretical and practical. In the theoretical part, Windows Azure Platform is described in detail. The description consists of it's main parts, position in the world of cloud computing, price and main competitors. In the practical part, migration of school PHP application developed during 4IT445 course from LAMP platform to Windows Azure Platform is described. Except the migration itself, the benefits of new platform to application are described. In the thesis conclusion, development and running applications on both platforms is compared. The target of the thesis is to write first complete Czech text about running PHP applications on Windows Azure Platform and to help PHP developers to chose which way to go.

This diploma thesis deals with integration of Competitive Intelligence and Business Intelligence into one solution, which would provide small and medium enterprises with maximum amount of information to help them make the right decision. The primary goal of the diploma thesis is to define user's requirements for such system and find for these requirements suitable information resources. Secondary goal is to analyze new Microsoft service called Windows Azure Marketplace Datamarket and its information resources, which could possibly be beneficial for this thesis. Gained information will be used to design the integrated solution. This diploma thesis could be used by companies, which are interested in solution like this, or by companies, which develop these solutions.

This diploma thesis deals with Cloud computing, in particular its implementation of Microsoft's Windows Azure platform. The following objectives were defined for the thesis, which is analyzing and identifying the essential characteristics of Cloud computing with a focus on the Windows Azure platform, characterizing the key differences of applications in the cloud than on-premise applications, formulate recommendations for enabling transformation of existing applications into the Microsoft Cloud computing, which is delivered as a service. The main contribution of the work is to identify key differences between Windows Azure and on-premise solution. Creating recommendations to minimize the negative impact of these differences and maximize the benefits associated with the use of Windows Azure Cloud Computing platform.

The main objective of this thesis is to introduce the Windows Azure platform, its possibilities and limits, particularly with regard to interaction with mobile clients running on the Windows Phone 7 platform. This is demonstrated by the development of an application designed to ease navigation through difficult terrain. This application is primarily designed to help cyclists and people with handicap restricting their movement. The knowledge acquired through design and implementation of this application is generalized to be useful for other developers using Windows Azure. The application is developed with focus on the usefulness for the defined target groups. This thesis is focused on the server side of the application running on the Windows Azure platform. The client side of the application running on the Windows Phone 7 platform is not covered in this thesis and is described in detail by Bc. Vít Čurda in his thesis Development of map application for tracking in cloud - Client side on Windows Phone 7.

The aim of this master's thesis is design and implementation of team-based microblogging service, which will be used on the Faculty of Information Technology, Brno University of Technology. First, concept of the microblogging together with the analysis of an existing microblogging services and implementation tools is described. Next part of this work goes into the details of the design, implementation and testing of the developed microblogging service.