Distributed Systems
We Make Services Valuable
The Distributed Systems (DSY) research group focuses on scalable and reliable implementation of sophisticated IT-based services. We address questions such as:
- What architecture best suits your specific cloud application?
- Which service model (IaaS, CaaS, PaaS, FaaS, ...) ensures optimal implementation of an application?
- Which tools are needed for development, operation and monitoring of the services?
- How to offer applications "as a service" (SaaS)?
- How to monetize modern IT services?
- How to integrate the "physical world" into complex IT services?
The research group is engaged in international projects within the EU research framework and works closely with partners from the private sector on innovative products within Innosuisse funded or directly financed projects.
The knowledge gained from applied research and development is transferred to students of computer science courses in the following modules:
Research Topics
Cloud Computing
The Init Cloud Computing Lab (ICCLAB) is dedicated to the automated deployment, operation and usage of configurable, highly scalable and resilient IT resources on a pay-per-use basis. In addition to infrastructure virtualization, this includes platform services for automated application delivery, scalable back-end, and monitoring of services and applications.
Service Prototyping
The Service Prototyping Lab (SPLAB) addresses the implementation and validation of complex services in cloud or post-cloud environments. In addition to the migration of existing services to the cloud, the main focus is on modern application architectures (Cloud Native Applications, Microservices, Serverless), the provisioning of tools for optimal implementation, the experimental validation of concepts and their monetization (Cloud Accounting and Billing).
Cloud Robotics
The Init Cloud Comupting Lab (ICCLAB) also addresses the integration of robotic applications into complex networked services. The usage of elastic cloud services allows to extend the capabilities of robots (computing power, context information, artificial intelligence, ...) as well as to manage and coordinate them. Programming frameworks and automation services enable developers to integrate robots into services without having in-depth knowledge at device level.
Projects
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Fog-Cloud Continuum Framework for Near-Data Computing
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Marketing insights from open/public data
The company's platform leverages public open data sources for marketing campaign optimisation. The effectiveness of such a campaign depends crucially on external factors such as political opinion, weather, surrounding demographics and even district-level trends. Research questions are: How can data sources be ...
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Smart policy-driven scanning of Docker images
Docker has become the de-facto standard for containerised application delivery. Hundreds of companies in Switzerland develop, deploy and operate Docker-packaged software regularly, often involving publicly available Docker images produced by third parties. For banks, insurances and other companies with high ...
Publications
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Spillner, Josef; Ramírez López, Manuel; Toffetti Carughi, Giovanni,
2017.
Cloud-native databases : an application perspective [paper].
In:
Mann, Zóltan Ádám; Stolz, Volker, eds.,
Advances in Service-Oriented and Cloud Computing... Autor: Zoltán Ádám Mann Advances in Service-Oriented and Cloud Computing : Workshops of ESOCC 2017, Oslo, Norway, September 27-29, 2017, Revised Selected Papers.
3rd International Workshop on Cloud Adoption and Migration (CloudWays), Oslo, Norway, 27-29 September 2017.
Cham:
Springer.
pp. 102-116.
Communications in Computer and Information Science ; 824.
Available from: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-79090-9_7
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Meszaros, Balazs; Harsh, Piyush; Bohnert, Thomas Michael,
2017.
DISCO: Distributed Computing as a Service [poster].
In:
UCC '17 Proceedings of the10th International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing.
10th International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing, Austin TX, USA, 5-8 December 2017.
ACM.
pp. 203-204.
Available from: https://doi.org/10.1145/3147213.3149216
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Spillner, Josef; Mateos, Cristian; Monge, David A.,
2017.
FaaSter, better, cheaper : the prospect of serverless scientific computing and HPC [paper].
In:
Mocskos, Esteban; Nesmachnow, Sergio, eds.,
High Performance Computing.
4th Latin American Conference (CARLA 2017), Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay, 20-22 September 2017.
Cham:
Springer.
pp. 154-168.
Communications in Computer and Information Science ; 796.
Available from: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73353-1_11
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Skoviera, Martin; Harsh, Piyush; Serhiienko, Oleksii; Perez Belmonte, Manuel; Bohnert, Thomas Michael,
2017.
Monetization of infrastructures and services [paper].
In:
2017 European Conference on Networks and Communications (EuCNC).
EuCNC, Oulu, Finland, 12-15 June 2017.
IEEE.
Available from: https://doi.org/10.1109/EuCNC.2017.7980651
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2017.
Practical tooling for serverless computing [paper].
In:
10th International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing (UCC '17), Austin, USA, 5-8 December 2017.
Austin, Texas, USA:
ACM.
Available from: https://doi.org/10.1145/3147213.3149452