The study on advanced cloud computing encompasses a large number of the most important as well as promising directions for scientific research and development in the era of advanced novel applications which explores the fundamental roles and interactions as well as practical impacts of advanced computing and information technologies on the next generation of cloud-empowered products, systems, services, and activities. Advanced information technology and computing engineering includes Internet of Things, ubiquitous computing, social networks, data/knowledge grids, and cloud computing and service-oriented architecture. A list of relevant topics is provided below, though many other topics could be listed. This special issue is intended to foster a high profile, leading edge forum for people, either in the scope of R&D projects, engineering or business applications, who are working in the field to contribute and disseminate innovative new work on advanced cloud computing. We solicit high quality technical papers in all aspects of advanced cloud computing including emerging trends and applications, theoretical studies, and experimental prototypes.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Social network, Internet of Things, smart phone/tablet app, and the other practical applications of clouds
• In-memory computing for data grid and computing grid and in-memory streaming
• Virtualization on network, storage, processing, analysis, and visualizing data
• Ubiquitous/ambient intelligence, knowledge grids and grid Intelligence, and related systems semantics and ontology engineering
• Web information retrieval and filtering, agent, service, mining and farming, and support system
• Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing, cluster computing, and grid computing
• Cloud-related management, governance, trust and privacy, security, and interoperability of clouds