This paper illustrates various content sharing systems that take advantage of cloud's storage and computational resources as well as their supporting conventional technologies. First, basic technology concepts supporting cloud-based systems from a client-server to cloud computing as well as their relationships and functional linkages are shown. Second, the taxonomy of cloud-based system models from the aspect of multiple clouds' interoperability is explained. Interoperability can be categorized into provider-centric and client-centric scenarios. Each can be further divided into federated clouds, hybrid clouds, multi-clouds and aggregated service by broker. Third, practical cloud-based systems related to contents sharing are reported and their characteristics are discussed. Finally, future direction of cloud-based content sharing is suggested.

This paper gives several explicit formulas for the waiting times in each stage in an alternating-service, two-stage tandem queue (M/G/1 type queue) with a gate in the first stage and server vacations (or setup time). These formula are obtained by using simple conversion relationships between the performance measures. This study has been motivated by the performance evaluation of call (packet or message) processing in telecommunication switching systems.

A new recursive method for obtaining the mean waiting time in a polling system with general service order and gated service discipline is proposed. The analytical approach used to obtain the mean waiting time is via an imbedded Markov chain and a new recursive method is used to obtain the moments of pseudocycle time which are parameters in the formula for the mean waiting time. This method is computationally tractable, so the analytical results can cover a wide range of applications. Simulations are also conducted to verify the validity of the analysis.