ATTACHMENT

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Part One

Cloud Technologies

The role of virtualization in cloud computing is rapidly advance in 2009 whether an internal or external cloud. The way clouds work is to manipulate virtualized machines in some kind of standardized, predictable environment that easily scales up to the level sought by the user. Customers can import their workloads to the cloud as pre-packaged sets of applications and operating systems, ready to run in the cloud's preferred virtualized machine format. For example, Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud, that's Amazon Machine Image or a version of open source Xen. Another example is VMware that executes data center operating system for an upcoming set of virtualization management products which could be called as the cloud operating system. Moreover, VMware is moving toward giving enterprises, through the virtualization layer, an ability to federate their own internal clouds with external clouds. It will give hosts in a cloud which the ability to run an enterprise's applications in a virtual machine without modification and apply a set of policies, such as a limit on application response time to customers. In 2009, virtualization will have an impact far beyond server consolidation. It will start changing the relationship between IT managers and end users, allowing faster service and more automated administration. It should give both more flexible resources for getting their jobs done at a lower cost.

Mobile Technologies

In today's busy world, there are usually three essential items one would take when going out: a wallet, a watch and a mobile phone. Now picture a guest who has a reservation and is ready to check-in at your hotel. He takes his mobile phone out, while passing through the check-in counter, he receives a message on his cell phone that includes a room number and goes straight to his room. This guest has checked-in, received his room number and a code to open his hotel room all through his mobile phone and without losing a step.

One of this year's big improvements in technology and hospitality is the mobile phone check-in. The innovation was first developed in 2001 which was a wireless pocket-sized device that enable a hotel employee to check-in guests without having to face the front desk hassle (Haussman, 2001). However, the procedure isn't as simple as it seems. In order to check-in with the wireless device, the customer has to show his/her credit card "to check the reservations via a wireless LAN connection to a server" (Hamblen, 2001). The goal with the wireless check-in was to reduce the check-in lines at the front desk and to have a faster check-in procedure for guests. When comparing the two self check-ins (wireless/credit card and the cell phone), the technology of using your own personal cell phone to do such services, prevails in terms of efficiency, "at least in pilot-form" (Williams, 2006). However, in order to understand how the wireless mobile check-in works, one needs to be familiar with such terms as RFID and NFC.

VingCard, the world leader in hotel security technology, is using RFID to introduce their ...