After three years of hard work, we are pleased to celebrate the release of the Cloud-TM (Transactional Memory) Platform prototype. This marks the final milestone in one of the European Union’s largest cloud computing research projects, within which Red Hat has played a leadership role.

The Cloud-TM project was initiated by the European Commission just over three years ago with the aim of defining both a standard and an appropriate development model for users of large-scale data grids.

At conception, stakeholders within the Cloud-TM project recognized the potential of commercial cloud computing platforms; however, the key benefit of extensive scalability was compromised by one major pitfall: the lack of programming standards and protocols. This limits the ability of developers to fully realize the power of distributed programming and tap into the potential of large-scale cloud platforms.

To overcome this, Red Hat engineers have been working alongside academics to build a data-centric middleware platform. The platform has been designed from the ground up to meet the scalability and flexibility requirements of cloud infrastructures.

"My colleagues and I on the Cloud-TM project team have developed a highly innovative data-centric middleware platform that not only creates new programming opportunities but also reduces the costs of developing, deploying and managing cloud applications," comments Paolo Romano, Cloud-TM project coordinator. "This is made possible thanks to the tight integration of highly scalable data management protocols, programming abstractions masking the complexity of coding for large scale cloud platforms, and self-tuning mechanisms that optimize efficiency in operational conditions encountered in cloud computing."

"Red Hat's motivation in supporting the project was to continue its commitment to advance the understanding, adoption and promise of cloud computing, free from vendor lock in," said Mark Little, Ph.D., vice president of middleware engineering, Red Hat. "By working with global not-for-profit organizations, academics and industry thought leaders, we can contribute our findings directly back to the community, unlocking the true potential of large-scale cloud computing."

Full details of the Cloud-TM project can be found at http://www.cloudtm.eu. Final documents from the project, which contain detailed information on the platform's architecture and evaluation, are available for download at http://www.cloudtm.eu/news-1/final-cloud-tm-platform-is-out