The success of key human activities ranging from research and business to everyday services relies on the use of ever more sophisticated, feature-rich and complex computer systems. These complex computer systems are regularly required to accomplish more, faster and on a broader scale, to adapt dynamically to changing workloads, scenarios and objectives, and to achieve guaranteed levels of performance and dependability. Satisfying such demanding requirements in the presence of the variability, heterogeneity and non-linear behaviour that characterise complex computer systems poses numerous challenges to both their developers and their users.

The aim of the conference is to bring together researchers, practitioners and leading experts from academia and industry, to advance the state of the art in the specification, development, validation and verification, and management of complex computer systems.

Scope and topics

Authors are invited to submit papers describing original, unpublished research results, case studies and tools. Additionally, submissions of poster papers are sought for two separate poster sessions: an "ongoing research" poster session, and a "PhD research" poster session. Topics of interest include but are not limited to the following aspects of complex computer systems:

* Requirement specification and analysis
* Verification and validation
* Model-driven development
* Reverse engineering and refactoring
* Design by contract
* Agile methods
* Safety-critical & fault-tolerant architectures
* Adaptive, self-managing and multi-agent systems
* Real-time, hybrid and embedded systems
* Systems of systems
* Tools and tool integration
* Industrial case studies

Different kinds of contributions are sought, including novel research, lessons learned, experience reports, and discussions of practical problems faced by industry and user domains. The ultimate goal is to build a rich and comprehensive conference program that can fit the interests and needs of different classes of attendees: professionals, researchers, managers, and students. A program goal is to organize several sessions that include both academic and industrial papers on a given topic, and culminate with panels to discuss relationships between industrial and academic research.

Full papers are divided into two categories: Technical Papers and Experience Reports. The papers submitted to both categories will be reviewed by program committee members, and papers accepted in either category will be published in the conference proceedings. Technical papers should describe original research, and experience reports should present practical projects carried out in industry, and reflect on the lessons learnt from them.

Poster paper submissions should specify in their abstract whether they describe ongoing or PhD research. Both types of poster papers will be reviewed by program committee members, and accepted posters will be published in the conference proceedin

Submission of Papers

Submitted manuscripts should be in English and formatted in the style of the IEEE Computer Society Proceedings Format. Papers should not exceed 10 pages for full papers and 2 pages for poster papers, including figures, references, and appendices. All submissions should be in PDF format. Submissions not adhering to the specified format and length may be rejected immediately, without review.

See the submission guidelines on the conference web site.
Important Dates
Submission of titles and abstracts ASAP EXTENDED DEADLINES
Submission of all papers 30 November, 2010 15 December 2010
Notification of acceptance 17 December 2010 15 January 2011
Camera-ready material for publication 15 January 2011 30 January 2011
Registration deadline for authors 15 January 2011 30 January 2011
Early registration deadline for non-authors 22 February 2011 22 February 2011

Submission dates for workshop papers may differ, so please check separate Calls for Papers on the workshop websites.