Bettati, Riccardo2014-11-032017-04-072014-11-032017-04-072012-082012-10-19http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2012-08-11819Cloud computing has seen a surge over the past decade as corporations and institutions have sought to leverage the economies-of-scale achievable through this new computing paradigm. However, the rapid adoptions of cloud computing technologies that implement the existing cloud computing paradigm threaten to undermine the long-term utility of the cloud model of computing. In this thesis we address how to accommodate the variety of access requirements and diverse hardware platforms of cloud computing users by developing extensions to the existing cloud computing paradigm that afford consumer-driven access requirements and integration of new physical hardware platforms.en-USCloud ComputingAccess MediationResource ManagementScalingThesis