We consider how underused computing resources within an enterprise may be
harnessed to improve utilization and create an elastic computing
infrastructure. Most current cloud provision involves a data center model, in
which clusters of machines are dedicated to running cloud infrastructure
software. We propose an additional model, the ad hoc cloud, in which
infrastructure software is distributed over resources harvested from machines
already in existence within an enterprise. In contrast to the data center cloud
model, resource levels are not established a priori, nor are resources
dedicated exclusively to the cloud while in use. A participating machine is not
dedicated to the cloud, but has some other primary purpose such as running
interactive processes for a particular user. We outline the major
implementation challenges and one approach to tackling them
