Shrisha Rao

New models of computation such as cloud computing, Big Data, and the Internet of Things have fundamentally upended common assumptions about the nature and purposes of computation. One thing that may be said about these and some other such paradigms is that they almost always require computation to be provided as a service to some entity seeking a larger end, rather than regarding the computation as being an end in itself. Services also come with their own set of challenges; e.g., services are typically more difficult to create and manage well than product creation, and services almost always require humans in the loop in critical functions.

Yet, classical computing curricula and research directions give few insights into how students may be taught to understand how computation may be fashioned to work as a component in a service existing in a larger business or social context.

This talk considers certain problems and issues that arise in services computing that are not covered well in standard discussions of computing technologies.