OpenNebula: An Open-source Cloud Management Platform Focused on User Needs

Here is the recording of the OpenNebula session at GigaOM Structure Europe. The interview covers the OpenNebula's focus on user needs and its recipe for success described in the post David Versus Goliath in Open-source Cloud Computing: The OpenNebula Recipe for Success.

European Digital Agenda: From Cloud-friendly to Cloud-active

Yesterday we participated in the second edition of the cloud computing workshop within the Digital Agenda Assembly 2012 aimed at defining the European Cloud Computing Strategy. Last year, the aim of the workshop was to identify the main elements of a European cloud strategy and the possible need for public-policy intervention, considering demand and supply side concerns. This edition has mainly focused on policy issues to coordinate cloud computing in Europe, international aspects of cloud, and key areas in contract terms, such as data preservation after termination of the contract, data integrity and disclosure. 

The agenda, presentations and recommendations are available at the Digital Agenda web site.

Cloud Innovation at Cloud Day 2011

Last Wednesday I had the pleasure to give a keynote about Challenges in Hybrid and Federated Cloud Computing at the first annual Cloud Day in Kista. The annual Cloud Days in Kista featured leading international and Swedish experts from industry and academia, who presented the cutting edge of cloud computing technologies. My presentation focused on how federated and hybrid clouds will play a significant role in IT strategies and e-infrastructures in the coming years, the different hybrid cloud computing scenarios, and the existing challenges for interoperability.

Organized by the Swedish Institute of Computer Science, the PDC Center for High Performance Computing, and the European Institute of Innovation and Technology under the enthusiastic leadership of Ake Edlund and Seif Haridi, the successful event also included keynotes by Michael Franklin (UC Berkeley) and Peter S Magnusson (Google). All the presentations are available for download.

Results of the Workshop Towards a Cloud Computing Strategy for Europe

The European Commission has published the results of the Workshop Towards a Cloud Computing Strategy for Europe: Matching Supply and Demand organized at the 1st Digital Agenda Assembly. The aim of the workshop was to identify the main elements of a European cloud strategy and the possible need for public-policy intervention, considering demand and supply side concerns. The results include two reports and one video. One of the reports is the below slide with the summary of the workshop presented in the plenary session. The second report is a more complete description of its purpose, context, discussions, actions and future steps.


The video is a very short interview with me, as speaker at the workshop, describing the challenges identified and the actions to address them.

The following is a transcript of that interview.

Cloud Computing will play a major role in tomorrow’s economy, first as innovation platform to increase productivity and competitiveness, and secondly as a new service industry that will provide many opportunities for European ICT companies. The workshop has helped identify the main areas of a European Cloud Strategy both to boost adoption of cloud computing and to lead cloud computing research and innovation. The workshop consisted of three different panels.

• The first panel has identified the different aspects that should be addressed to ensure that Europe can play a leading and active role both in using and in enabling cloud computing
• The second panel has explored the different opportunities for innovation and research to help create better clouds and to accelerate its adoption
• The third panel has discussed the needs of standards for interoperability, including a legal framework for international data protection and privacy

Challenges in Hybrid and Federated Cloud Computing

"Challenges in Hybrid and Federated Cloud Computing" is the title of the keynote about the future of cloud computing that I am giving tomorrow July 7th at HPCS2011 and on the 31th of August at ParCo2011. The keynote describes the different cloud federation scenarios, ranging from a federation built on commercial cloud providers that offer no real support for federation to one built on data centers of the same organization where the sites are completely dedicated to supporting all aspects of federation. The level of federation is defined based on the amount of information disclosed and how much control over the resources is provided across sites. The keynote also presents the existing challenges for interoperability in federated and hybrid cloud computing scenarios, and ends with real-life examples of multi-cloud environments running OpenNebula.

Would be great to meet you at these venues!.

View more presentations from Ignacio M. Llorente.

A View of the Challenges, Opportunities and Innovation Potential of Cloud Computing for the European Cloud Strategy

Unleashing the Potential for Innovation of Cloud Computing is the title of the presentation that I will give in the workshop Towards a Cloud Computing Strategy for Europe: Matching Supply and Demand at the 1st Digital Agenda Assembly next Friday, June 17th. The aim of the workshop is to help identify the main elements of a European Cloud Strategy. As pointed out by Rainer Zimmermann, DG INFSO, Head of unit: Software & Service Architectures and Infrastructures, The impact of cloud technologies goes beyond reducing IT costs and improving business efficiency. Companies of all sizes and government institutions will achieve new levels of productivity and innovation.

In the presentation, which is available online at the workshop site, I introduce the key challenges and gaps to be addressed in order to accelerate the adoption of cloud computing and so to unleash its full potential for innovation, contributing to increase the competitiveness and productivity of the European economy. For each gap I briefly describe the issues that, in my view, European Commission funding should address to help bridge such gap. The presentation mostly focuses on the technology challenges by elaborating on the open research issues on cloud computing that should be addressed to create better clouds, the importance on innovation-focused research to be cloud-active, and the opportunities for the ICT industry in this new service industry. OpenNebula is also described as European success story in cloud computing research and innovation. Finally open-source is presented as a model for innovation and as a vehicle to bring open interoperable cloud computing to the European industry.

Europe should play a leading role not only in using cloud computing and leveraging its full potential to foster innovation, but also in proving the enabling components to build better cloud solutions. I am firmly convinced that both represent the main opportunities for the European ICT industry.

Hope to see you there!.

SIENA European Roadmap on Grid and Cloud Standards for e-Science and Beyond

This is the third, and last (for the moment), report that I would like to recommend. It nicely complements the other two reports (The Future of Cloud Computing and Priorities to Advance Cloud Computing). SIENA European Roadmap on Grid and Cloud Standards for e-Science and Beyond addresses requirements, technologies, and interoperability and standards for e-infrastructure. I am part of the Editorial Board of this roadmap that in this first version includes use cases and position papers collected for the Cloudscape III event.

Cloudscape III – Driving Europe’s Cloud computing Strategy - took place on the 15 and 16 of March in Brussels offering the perfect opportunity for experts, developers and end-users in the cloud computing space to become part of the cloud standards process. The event, hosted by the EC-funded SIENA initiative, brought a 360° overview on the Cloud computing landscape, covering benefits for enterprise, research and government alongside challenges spanning scalability, data movement, ownership and privacy, security and legal issues, openness and interoperability.

Call for Contributions to the Cloud Track of ServiceWave 2011

We look forward to your contributions to the Cloud Computing track at ServiceWave 2011, which will be held in Poznan on October 26th-28th. The aim of the track will be to discuss the potential of emerging techniques and technologies to contribute to a European Cloud Computing Strategy. The deadline for contributions is May 16th, 2011. Concrete topics comprise but are not limited to:

• Cloud management and enablement technologies
• Interoperability and portability
• Federation and aggregation of clouds
• Security for clouds
• Efficient energy usage of resources

I am very happy to chair this scientific track with the help and advice of the following recognized experts in the field:

• Rosa M. Badia, Barcelona Supercomputing Center and CSIC, Spain
• Brian Coghlan, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
• Frederic Desprez, INRIA, France
• Erik Elmroth, Umeå University, Sweden
• Wolfgang Gentzsch, HPC Consultant, DEISA, Germany
• Christian Geuer-Pollmann, Microsoft, Germany
• Seif Haridi, SICS, Sweden
• Dieter Kranzlmüller, LMU & LRZ Munich, Germany
• Marcel Kunze, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany
• Lucio Grandinetti, University of Calabria, Italy
• Philippe Massonet, CETIC, Belgium
• Ruben S. Montero, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain
• Christine Morin, INRIA, France
• Burkhard Neidecker-Lutz, SAP AG, Germany
• Karsten Oberle, Alcatel-Lucent, Bell-Labs, Germany
• Dana Petcu, West University of Timisoara, Romania
• Antonio Puliafito, University of Messina, Italy
• Omer Rana, Cardiff University, UK
• Domenico Talia, ICAR-CNR & University of Calabria, Italy
• Stefan Wesner, HLRS, Germany
• Yaron Wolfsthal, IBM Haifa Research Laboratory, Israel
• Ramin Yahyapour, TU Dortmund University, Germany

Identifying the Elements of a European Cloud Strategy

The 1st Digital Agenda Assembly, which will be held in Brussels on June 16-17 2011, will include the workshop Towards a Cloud Computing Strategy for Europe: Matching Supply and Demand to help identify the main elements of a European Cloud Strategy and the possible need for public-policy intervention, considering demand and supply side concerns. The workshop, organized by Maria Tsakali and chaired by Megan Richards, is composed of three different panels:

• Cloud Computing: what will Europe do?
• Cloud computing fostering innovation
• Towards cloud interoperability

I will participate in the panel about fostering innovation with cloud computing, where we will discuss the opportunities presented by the cloud and the potential for innovation. Other panelists are senior-management representatives of European companies, organizations and networks, and the European Parliament.

The workshop will build on and broaden the consultation process on a European

Cloud Computing strategy launched by Vice-President Neelie Kroes in the World Economic Forum Davos, 27 January 2011. The strategy includes three main areas:

• First, the legal framework. This concerns data protection and privacy, including the international dimension. It also concerns laws and other rules that have a bearing on the deployment of cloud computing in public and private organisations. And it concerns users' rights insofar as they are provided for by law.
• Second, technical and commercial fundamentals. We want to extend our research support and focus on critical issues such as security and availability of cloud services. As a mediator, the Commission can also play a stronger role in the technical standardisation of APIs and data formats, as well as in the development of template contracts and service level agreements.
• Third, the market. We will support pilot projects aiming at cloud deployment. To really harness the power of public procurement we want to engage with our public sector partners on Member State and regional levels to work on common approaches to cloud computing.

Registration is now open.