Crowdcloud: Cloud of the Crowd

The ever increasing utilisation of crowdsourcing in various domains and its popularity as a method of accessing free or inexpensive labour, services, and innovation, and also as a method of providing fast solutions is observed as a good opportunity for both non-profit and for-profit organisations while it also appeals to members of the crowd. In particular, many cloud-based projects have benefited from crowdsourcing their needs for resources and they rely on the crowd and the resources they provide, either for free or for a nominal fee. However, current cloud platforms either provide services to the crowd or request services from them. Moreover, cloud services generally include a legally binding contract between the cloud service providers and cloud service clients. In this paper, the possible opportunities for applying crowdsourcing principles in the cloud in a new fashion are reviewed by proposing the idea of crowdcloud. Crowdcloud simply refers to the availability of cloud infrastructure, cloud platform, and cloud software services to the crowd by the crowd with or without a legally binding contract. This paper discusses the differences between crowdcloud and other similar notions already in existence. Then, a functional architecture is proposed for crowdcloud and its constituents. Some of the advantages of crowdcloud, along with potential issues in crowdcloud and how to circumvent or minimise them are also reviewed and discussed.