Unifying geographically scattered resources that include computing, storage, and data resources as well as instruments and software tools and making the desired resources available to clients on demand are two important trends in current distributed systems. Clouds and grids that provide an infrastructure for achieving these objectives are popular among various types of users that range from enterprises to scientific and engineering communities. The ability to grow and shrink a resource pool dynamically and the “pay as you go” model that allows a client to pay only for its resource usage and avoid the commitment of its funds for resource acquisition and maintenance are responsible for the rapidly spreading use of cloud computing. In addition to enterprise and scientific computing a cloud is also being considered for the management of smart facilities that include sensor equipped bridges, buildings and industrial machinery. Unification of geographically dispersed resources and tools for the analysis of both sensor data as well as archived data on facility maintenance is an integral part of smart facilities management.
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