*** Cloud Challenge 2015 ***

8th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Utility and Cloud
Computing (UCC 2015)

December 07-10, 2015, St. Raphael Resort, Limassol, Cyprus

http://uccchallenge.cs.cf.ac.uk

*** DEADLINE: 10 September, 2015 ***


CALL FOR PROPOSALS

Cloud Challenge is a competition where participants develop solutions by
utilizing virtualization technologies and Cloud computing. Proposals may
range from exploratory approaches to real-world problems benefiting from
private, public, or hybrid Clouds. This year, we especially encourage
proposals based on the application of lightweight approaches to
virtualisation, such as containers.

Nowadays, a wide range of Cloud technologies such as Docker, OpenStack,
Amazon EC2 or Microsoft Azure are available as well as Cloud paradigms,
such as Map/Reduce. We invite the submission of proposals related to
various aspects of Cloud computing elucidating novel approaches for
extending features of technologies and/or for advancing paradigms.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

· Usability for developers of Cloud solutions
· Energy consumption
· Checkpointing container-based applications
· Distributed container repositories or app stores
· Repository technologies
· Sharing of technologies and data
· Data management in Clouds
· Security in Clouds
· Hybrid clouds, where approaches offload to public clouds when data
centers cannot support application
· The use of containers used to provide portability between different cloud
providers and environments
· Virtual appliance or container selection, based on pricing and/or energy
consumption and/or any other metric applicable to the application or
scenario at hand

The competitors should outline the nature of the problem that might range
from business, science to socio-lifestyle applications. Two categories of
proposals are invited. The first one addresses approaches, which have been
implemented and authors should present the methodology used to solve the
problem and the means of validation of the solution. The competitors must
also be able to demonstrate their approach at UCC 2015, if selected, using
an appropriate means e.g. a live demo, a simulation, emulation, or similar.
The second category asks for cutting-edge future work and the design of
the solution. The competitors must be able to present intended use cases
and a well-designed architecture.

From each category of those proposals, finalists will be selected to present
their work at the conference, including a demonstration of the system or
software for the first category. The judges will award a first prize winner
per category at the conference.

FORMAT OF PROPOSALS

Proposals may be up to 6 pages long in the standard IEEE paper format for
the first category of accomplished work and 2-4 pages long in the standard
IEEE paper format for the second category. The following information reflects
a rough outline for proposals:

· Precise definition of several qualitative and/or quantitative metrics that
will be utilized to measure the efficacy of the Cloud solution, e.g., energy
consumption, level of software maintenance, performance, or scalability.
· The software and hardware systems used/intended to be used to address
the problem.
· An analysis of the impact, significance, and novelty of the solution.

Proposals will be reviewed according to the criteria listed above and should
present unpublished work that it is not under consideration for publication
elsewhere. At least one member from each selected team is expected to give
a technical talk, to provide a demonstration of the system for the first
category, and answer questions posed by the judges.

PUBLICATION

Proposals selected for the presentation will be included in the proceedings
of the conference as short papers.

SUBMISSION

Cloud challenge 2015 proposals can be submitted at the conference
submission site

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=uccchallenge2015

IMPORTANT DATES

· Proposal papers for the first category due: 31 July, 2015
· Finalists for the first category selected: 31 August, 2015
· Proposal papers for the second category due: 10 September, 2015
· Finalists for the second category selected: 17 September, 2015
· Camera ready proposal papers due: 21 September, 2015

CHAIRS

Ian Taylor, Cardiff University, UK
Sandra Gesing, University of Notre Dame, USA

COMMITTEE

Adam Barker, University of St. Andrews, UK
Kyle Chard, University of Chicago, USA
Andrew Harrison, MedeAnalytics, USA/UK
Joanna Kolodziej, Cracow University of Technology, Poland
Dagmar Krefting, University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Germany
Carlo Mastroianni, ICAR-CNR, Italy
Cezary Mazurek, PSNC, Poznan, Poland
Chris Smith, Distributed Bio
Vlado Stankovski, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Matthew Turk, NCSA, USA