Tag: cloud-native (Page 2 of 2)

IC2E/ICFC 2019 Review: From Kubernetes to Micro-Clouds

Early conference start = no tourists yet on Charles bridge

From June 24 to 27, an academic double-conferences has been taking place in Prague: IC2E 2019, the venerable seventh IEEE International Conference on Cloud Engineering, and ICFC 2019, the recently spun off first IEEE International Conference on Fog Computing. The Service Prototyping Lab at Zurich University of Applied Sciences contributed a tutorial on Kubernetes application engineering on the first conference day. The important research-inspired message conveyed is that Kubernetes is a nice container management platform, but not a cloud platform per se, and characterised by a lack of tools to ensure simplicity and quality in applications, and still emerging understanding of how to design applications in a technically and economically optimal way. This blog post reports on some of the conference discussion topics as a service for those who could not attend..

Continue reading

Students: Invitation to Serverless and Cloud-native Application Development

Bachelor students of computer science at Zurich University of Applied Sciences focus a lot on software development. Software is never developed in the blue; rather, software needs a concrete environment to function and to deliver value. In ‘Programming’ (1st/2nd semester) and ‘Software Development’ (3rd/4th semester), you learn some basic skills. In ‘Systems-oriented Programming’ (2nd semester), you apply these skills to predefined systems with some constraints. In ‘Web Development’ (3rd semester), you apply these skills to another environment in which there is a lot of pace through new technologies. In ‘Game Development’ (5th semester), you develop for specific interactive scenarios, and in ‘Mobile Applications’ (5th semester, you develop user-facing apps for common mobile platforms.

One of the most fascinating and economically important areas is the development of applications which run in the cloud. You may access them with web or mobile devices, but you still cannot see them! Still, they are very powerful, scalable to millions of users, and interconnected across cloud providers and with various backend systems such as databases, message queues and key-value stores. This is why we offer SCAD, a new elective module on Serverless and Cloud-native Application Development.

Continue reading

Bundling CNA Applications

For almost five years, we have been researching cloud-native applications. As part of an industry-wide push to cloud-native computing, a lot of stacks and middleware components are proposed every day, but few tools and processes help improving the applications themselves especially in terms of quality attributes such as discoverability, elasticity and resilience. With Helm charts, there is already a higher-level approach to package cloud applications in Kubernetes environments. Our work on static analysis of Helm charts and quality assessment beyond is documented and ongoing. In this post, we take a first look at CNAB, or Cloud Native Application Bundle which is self-described as secure and cloud-agnostic way to deliver applications.

Continue reading

End-to-end testing of cloud-native applications

In our research group, we have for many years observed and systematically explored how cloud applications are being developed. In particular, we focus our investigations on cloud-native applications whose properties are largely determined by exploiting the capabilities of modern cloud platforms for both their development and operation. As we are involved in European research on testing cloud applications (Elastest), our aim was to look at the current project results through the cloud-native glasses. This blog post reports about end-to-end testing of composite containerised applications from this perspective.

Continue reading

First International Workshop on Cloud-Native Applications Design and Experience — CNAX 2018

Our SPLab organised a full day workshop on cloud-native applications (see the web page and call for papers of the CNAX 2018) within the IEEE/ACM UCC/BDCAT 2018 umbrella.

The workshop was organised in collaboration with Ivo Krka from Google and also supported by Jorge Cardoso from Huawei. The blending of industry and academic research has always been a key point in cloud-native work which relies heavily on fast-paced innovation.

Continue reading

Diving into the Helm ecosystems: From charts to metrics

In recent months, we have extensively studied Helm charts, including setting up a continuous quality assessment, to find out more about this promising packaging format for Kubernetes applications. Apart from individual tweets and occasional talks, there was a lack of a coherent presentation of the ongoing work. Yet, due to the increasing installation base of Kubernetes stacks, the significance of this work appears to be on the rise. This blog post therefore tells what we achieved already and what we are still going to do in the next months.

Continue reading

Invitation to the Zurich Cloud/Big Data/Serverless Week

At Zurich University of Applied Sciences, in particular at the Service Prototyping Lab, we are very proud to announce a packed global technology event week which brings many international experts in cloud computing, big data computing and serverless computing into little Switzerland. Join us for more than 140 unique technical and scientific talks over five days!

11th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing – UCC 2018

5th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Big Data Computing, Applications and Technologies – BDCAT 2018

From the 17th to the 20th of December, we expect around 200 attendees at the Technopark to discuss trends and progress on many cloud and big data topics. Apart from the two main conference tracks, there will be a cloud challenge, a doctoral forum, a posters presentation, 4 tutorials, and 8 workshops on diverse emerging topics (e.g. cloud-native, sustainable big data for environments, software testing, security and trust). Broad industry support is lined up to support the event with attendees and corporate support. Daypasses start at 350 CHF.

Check the UCC and BDCAT websites for programme and registration!

European Symposium on Serverless Computing and Applications – ESSCA 2018

In addition to UCC and BDCAT, we offer a community-priced event on the 21st of December where starting with 50 CHF you can attend to listen to 16 expert talks and tutorials on the trend topics of serverless computing, FaaS and cloud functions.

Check the ESSCA website for programme and registration!

ESOCC 2018: Service-oriented and cloud-native system challenges

The European Conference on Service-Oriented and Cloud Computing (ESOCC) is among the most recognised community-run venues to discuss technological advances among researchers and practitioners. Its 7th edition (ESOCC 2018) just took place in Como, Italy, and we were participating for three reasons: to present a paper on migrating multi-container applications between clouds, to sense new challenges ahead especially in the cloud-native space, and to connect stronger to fellow researchers from across the continent.

Continue reading

Newer posts »