We, the ICCLab, are proud to announce that the past Presidential Conference of the Swiss Informatics Society accepted our proposal (slides) for setting up a Special Interest Group in Cloud Computing.
The SIG is currently being formed. If you wish to participate and influence the future of Swiss Cloud Computing in this context please don’t hesitate to contact us. Any active participation is more than welcome.
Feel free to join our LinkedIn Group.
Keynote: T. M. Bohnert and C. Marti, “Platform as a Service: The Future of Software Development” (slides).
Event background:
Organizer : Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Vinnova, Export Radet, Saab
| 08:30 | Opening of Conference |
| Mr. Mauro Dell’Ambrogio, State Secretary for Education and Research (TBC) Thomas M. Bohnert/Geri Baudinot from Zurich University of Applied Sciences (TBC) |
|
| 08:40 | Swiss-Swedish Innovation Initiative |
| Mr. Jürg Burri Head of Research and Innovation Directorate at Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research & Innovation (TBC) | |
| 08:50 | Platform as a Service: The Future of Software Development |
| Thomas M. Bohnert and Christof Marti, ZHAW School of Engineering / ICCLab | |
| 09:05 | EUREKA – Doing Business through Technology |
| Presentation about Available EUREKA & EUROSTARS Funding For Market Oriented Swiss-Swedish R&D Projects, VINNOVA & State Secretariat for Education, Research & Innovation | |
| 09:20 | Component Based Architecture with Ericsson |
| Mr. Jens Jensen, Senior Expert Implementation Architecture Ericsson | |
| 09:35 | Opportunities within Model Based Engineering & Model Based Development with SAAB |
| Mr. Stefan Andersson, Senior Executive in Engineering SAAB Group | |
| 09:50 | Opportunities within New Agile Software Development with SAAB |
| Mr. Tommy Eklund, Senior Executive in Engineering SAAB Group | |
| 10:05 | IBM |
| 10:20 | Thales or Nagra Vision (TBC) |
| 10:50 | Coffee Break |
| 11:20 | Meeting the Challenge of Reliable Software |
| Professor Bertrand Meyer, Chair of Software Engineering at ETH Zurich | |
| 11:35 | Chalmers University of Technology Gothenburg |
| Professor Johan Carlsten, Vice Principal Chalmers University of Technology Professor Jan Bosch, Head of Software Centre at Chalmers University of Technology |
|
| 11:50 | Process Improvement and Process Engineering |
| Ms. Mira Kajko-Matsson, Associate Professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology | |
| 12:05 | Networking Lunch |
| 13:05 | SME project pitches, 7 minutes/company 8 pitches |
| 14:05 | SME project pitches, 7 minutes/company 8 pitches |
| 15:05 | B2B Meetings, Á 15-20 minutes |
| 17:30 | Wrap Up and End of Workshop |
Swiss Informatics Society – Cloud Computing Special Interest Group
We, the ICCLab, are proud to announce that the past Presidential Conference of the Swiss Informatics Society accepted our proposal (slides) for setting up a Special Interest Group in Cloud Computing.
The SIG is currently being formed. If you wish to participate and influence the future of Swiss Cloud Computing in this context please don’t hesitate to contact us. Any active participation is more than welcome.
Feel free to join our LinkedIn Group.
The ICCLab Team
Daniele Stroppa is a researcher in the InIT Cloud Computing Lab. His research interests include virtualization and cloud performance. He is currently involved in the MobileCloud Networking project.
After receiving his Master’s degree in Mobile Computing, Daniele started working as a Software Engineer in the Telecommunication industry, working with Vodafone and Fastweb in Italy first and Nexus Telecom AG and Alcatel-Lucent in Switzerland then.
The second swiss OpenStack user group (CHOSUG) was held. It was an excellent event so well attended that there was only standing room! A big thanks goes out to the organisers and sponsors (RackSpace, SWITCH and ICCLab).
There was six presentations, 3 which were more detailed and 3 that were more lightning talks in nature. Lucas and Toni from the ICCLab gave a super presentation on Ceilometer and Christof made short work of the deep topic of OpenStack and CloudFoundry. The presentations (in running order) were:
All talks were recorded by the kind folks at SWITCH and are available for your viewing pleasure!
Check out more pics on the CHOSUG flickr account.
What happens when a group of experts from the Cloud Computing space and the Mobile/Telco industry get together in a meeting room? Last week the first General Assembly Meeting for the MobileCloud Networking (MCN) project was held in Palermo, with over thirty experts joining forces for four days to deliver an excellent result. The ICCLab was present as one of the contributing partners and technical leader of the project.
After a rocky start (or better, a rocky landing) on Monday evening, the GA meeting started on Tuesday morning with an overview of the project and an open discussion about issues related to dissemination and publications. After lunch the group split into two to discuss the use case scenarios for the MCN project and to start working on the requirements.
On Wednesday the day started with an overview of the status of the different Work Packages, to continue then with a series of ‘deep dive’ sessions, exploring some of the technologies that will be used in the MCN project. The first session MobileCloud Infrastructural Foundations technologies, such as OpenStack, cloud monitoring and RAN virtualisation. The day ended with a pleasant tour of the city of Palermo and with a great sicilian dinner.
On Thursday morning the ‘deep dive’ sessions were resumed, with interesting talks about the Mobile Core Network components and different options to ‘cloudify’ them. In the afternoon the Mobile Platform session took place, with topics varying from IMS-as-a-Service and digital signage to SLA and Charging&Billing. Then, after a long session on Thursday night, the overall architecture was presented on Friday morning, including a deep overview of the OpenStack components. The GA meeting ended over lunch, before all the participants made their way home.
Overall it has been a great meeting with extremely competent partners and very well organised by the MCN partner Italtel. The next MCN GA Meeting will be held in Paris in June/July.
More information about the MobileCloud Networking project can be found here.
Call for Papers: 2nd Open Cloud Day
Place: Plenumssaal, ZHAW, Campus Technikumstrasse 9, Winterthur
Date: 11th June 2013
Audience: 100-150 participants
Time: 09:00-17:00
Organisation
1. Pietro Brossi, ICCLab
2. Mark Waber, /ch/open, Puzzle ITC GmbH
3. Thomas Michael Bohnert, ICCLab
4. Matthias Günter, /ch/open, GnostX GmbH
Motivation and Goal
Cloud Computing becomes more and more important. To get the full power of clouds in the view of /ch/open these clouds should be open according of the principles open cloud initiative ( http :/ / www . opencloudinitiative . org /). The goal is to foster open clouds and interoperability of clouds. Especially taking into account the requirements of public administrations and large as well as small and medium-sized businesses. In this conference especially concrete stacks are discussed. At least one of the afternoon tracks will explicitly be technical. The developments in Gov Clouds is also discussed. The conference builds on the success of the first Open Cloud Day in 2012.
Possible Program
The event is planned as a full day event with two or three tracks.
Track: Building Clouds with Open Stack
Suggestions and participation in that track is welcome.
Track: Data in the Cloud and Interoperability
Suggestions and participation in that track are welcome.
Track: n.n.
We take suggestions on the topic of a third track.
Call for Participation
We are looking for:
1. Speeches and suggestions for speeches with the following information: Presenter, Title and Abstract until the 24st February 2013
2. Sponsors: 4-5x CHF 2’000.- for: naming in all publications, placing of a banner, a slot in the talks, 2 free tickets, participation at the annual sponsoring dinner of /ch/open.
Target Audience
CIOs and Technical Managers
IT staff in public administrations and businesses
Technical Architects, System Engineers and Software Developers
Members of Open Source cloud projects
Cloud software vendors and service providers
Target Pricing
CHF 180.-
CHF 130.- (early bird: until 5.4.2013)
CHF 110.- for members of /ch/open, SI, swissICT, EuroCloud, Universities, public
administrations and open source developers. Early Bird (before 5.4.2013, CHF 80.-)
Sponsors get 2 free tickets.
Contact
Please send your suggestions before the 20th February 2013:
Matthias Günter, 079 457 13 22, matthias.guenter@ch-open.ch
What does a sledge and a strategy have in common? Simple, the ICCLab Retreat and Sledging Event which took place in Lenzerheide – Switzerland last weekend. The event started 06:45 in Winterthur and yes, the team demonstrated impressively that this time is also at Saturdays no problem. When we arrived at the coach, there was the first problem to solve with the coach-driver that was: How to divided an IT-scientist from his notebook? Because all sort of bags were not allowed in the coach and beside that, also no drinks and food. But of course, we managed it and realized that not everything can be as elastic and flexible as a Cloud.
Once arrived at the Lenzerheide, the hotel Valbella-Inn welcomed us warmly and the booked conference room was well prepared by the hotel. After the introduction of the retreat meeting by Thomas Michael Bohnert and the review of the year 2012, we also discussed where the ICCLab should go in 2013. In addition to the objectives of the individual themes and initiatives, all members have the same idea about where should be the ICCLab end 2013th. The ICCLab should be seen by public as a competence center for cloud computing and all the related technologies to it. Once the meeting was over, the sledging competition started with Andy Edmonds as referee. As it is in Ski-Alpine, we had a first and a second run and after the latter the winner was clear, Christof Marti has won both runs. After the sledging, we enjoyed a very typically Swiss drink available in most Ski resorts in Graubünden and is called the “Schümlipflümli”. The Retreat and Sledging Event was a success and the whole team is looking forward to the next years sledging competition because one or the other wants to have a revenge versus the current ICCLab sledging master.
Like us in the ICCLab, you have likely spent lots of time researching the best means to deploy OpenStack and you’ve decided upon a particular method (at the ICCLab we use foreman and puppet). You’ve implemented OpenStack with your chosen deployment plan and technologies and you now have an operational OpenStack cluster. The question you now have to ask is:
“How do I test that all functionality is operating correctly?”
You could certainly take the time to write a suite of tests using the various OpenStack python clients and maintain those. However there is an OpenStack project already available that can save you a lot of time. OpenStack Tempest is a project and suite that comprises of a set of integration tests. Tempest is used to validate the OpenStack code base through it’s integration with Jenkins (continuous integration server). Tempests calls against OpenStack service API endpoints and uses the python unittest2 and nosetest frameworks at its core.
If you wish to experiment with Tempest locally, try it out with devstack. Devstack automatically configures Tempest for use with it. To ease things, simply use vagrant-devstack (README here) do the following:
You will now see quite an amount of tests being run against your devstack installation. It will take time! If you wish to integrate Tempest with your Jenkins CI server see information on devstack gate. There is also a Tempest Jenkins plugin. Finally, if you wish to run Tempest against a “real” installation of OpenStack you will need to configure the Tempest configuration file (etc/tempest.conf) and change the relevant information (more here).
“A Joint Research & Education Agenda between CloudSigma and Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), InIT Cloud Computing Laboratory (ICCLab)”
Cloud Computing is transforming the IT industry. It keeps constantly expanding and has grown up to a level which requires matching scientific initiatives and educational offers. That is why the ICCLab, at the Zurich University of Applied Science (ZHAW), and CloudSigma have united their efforts, experience, and expertise to produce a “Joint Research & Education Agenda”. The ICCLab is an establishing thought leader within many Cloud Computing research and innovation communities. CloudSigma, on the other hand perceives constant innovation and improved services as a founding principle on which it has built its business model. The “Joint Research & Education Agenda” initiative between CloudSigma and the ICCLab is one of few of its kind in Switzerland where an academic institution with the right focus and strategy is engaging with one of the world’s leading cloud infrastructure service providers.
The joint initiative between CloudSigma and the ICCLab is to deliver four basic goals enumerated here:
The “eco-system” is a network of institutions, communities, and people surrounding CloudSigma, ZHAW and the ICCLab, including in particular the European Union’ s Framework Programme Research, Future Internet Public-Private Partnership activities and Swiss Cloud Computing stakeholders.
To generate strategic Intellectual Property (IPR)
The generation of strategic Intellectual Property (IPR) is defined as the process of development of technologies which are important for both CloudSigma and ZHAW/ICCLab based upon common and shared strategic research themes.
To transfer results beyond research and open source projects into the commercial market
The eventual transfer of results is a top priority objective. It is to be achieved either internally via bi-lateral funding agreements or using external tools such as, for instance, the Swiss Commission for Technology and Innovation.
To gear the educational mission by transfer critical know-how to future generations of engineers.
Finally the initiative aims at delivering valuable knowledge to BSc and MSc students at ZHAW, and cloud computing stakeholders by transferring critical know-how by various, tailor-made educational measures.
The association between ZHAW (ICCLab) and CloudSigma will also bring benefits to CloudSigma customers. As a result of joint research and innovation, CloudSigma customers will be offered new and/or improved cloud services that will either help in creating richer and more valuable applications and/or facilitate reducing the costs of existing service offered by CloudSigma. Generally, the “Joint Research & Education Agenda” is expected to help in eliminating many technology barriers by setting clear strategic research themes, on one side, and understanding the needs of cloud providers on the other. From this perspective the initiative will aim at eliminating topics such as the lack of interoperability in clouds today, the lack of dependable cloud services and the absence of reliable cloud performance.
About CloudSigma
CloudSigma is a pure-cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) provider that offers highly-available, flexible, enterprise-class cloud servers and cloud hosting solutions, both in Europe and the U.S. CloudSigma is the most customizable cloud provider on the market, giving customers full control over their cloud and eliminating restrictions on how users deploy their computing resources. With CloudSigma, customers can provision processing, storage, networks and other fundamental computing resources as they please, as well as easily deploy any operating system or application with full root/administrative access. The result is the highest-performing cloud at the most efficient price possible.
With infrastructure in Interxion’s European Cloud Hubs and SwitchNap’s Las Vegas data center campus, CloudSigma selects the highest-quality facilities to support its innovative infrastructure. CloudSigma is increasingly being recognized for its advancement of the cloud IaaS industry and was chosen as one of Europe’s top 25 cloud companies in 2010. For more information, please visit www.CloudSigma.com or visit the company on Twitter @CloudSigma, Facebook and Google+.
About the ICCLab
The ICCLab is part of the Institute for Information Technology (InIT) at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) in Switzerland. With just under 9000 students, 26 bachelor degree programs and 10 consecutive Master’s programs, ZHAW is one of the largest multidisciplinary universities of applied sciences in Switzerland. ZHAW maintains 20 institutes and 30 centres, which jointly provide customised educational and research services to the public and private sector. Based on that foundation, ZHAW is inherently committed to the commercial exploitation by means and support for creation of high-tech spin-offs.
The research of the ICCLab is exclusively dedicated to the domain of cloud computing, covering the entire technology stack from Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), over Platform as a Service (PaaS), to Software as a Service (SaaS). The research and exploitation is based on a comprehensive and holistic approach to science and innovation, based on three driving principles, namely Scientific Foundation, Strategic Impact and Knowledge Transfer.
CloudSigma
Robert Jenkins, CEO, CloudSigma, www.cloudsigma.com
ZHAW/ ICCLab
Thomas M. Bohnert, Head of ICCLab, www.cloudcomp.ch
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