The CrossCloud event series builds upon the increasing relevance of multi-cloud and federated cloud architectures. The high degree of distribution and heterogeneity in such architectures leads to a massive development and management complexity for application providers. The concept of a cloud broker is therefore introduced as a way to outsource this complexity to facilitate the adoption of multi-cloud architectures. This edition of the workshop focuses on the architecture of such cloud brokering systems, and more specifically the concept of Broker as a Service (BaaS): How could a broker be provided as an intermediate middleware service to different stakeholders?

The objective of the workshop is to foster a lively discussion about the theory and practice of cloud brokers, including an interactive and hands-on session (cf. design (te)charrette). The desired outcomes are to develop a new collective understanding of the key architectural aspects in this field, to come to a holistic architecture of the cloud broker concept, and hopefully to affect future research agendas. We invite researchers from diverse domains to identify important issues in the form of open research questions, state of the art reviews, standardization efforts, and to propose solutions and experiences including early-stage work.

CrossCloud Brokers will be held in conjunction with the ACM/IFIP/USENIX Middleware conference in Bordeaux, France in December 2014.

Authors are encouraged, but not limited, to cover the following topics:
- Holistic architecture of Broker as a Service (BaaS)
- Efficient and open decision support system
- Scalable multi-cloud and multi-application monitoring
- Application (re)deployment in heterogeneous, multi-cloud environment
- Experiences with multi-cloud architectures or approaches

The workshop is open for two types of submissions (via the EasyChair submission site):
- Position papers, not exceeding the limit of 3 pages, ACM SIG Proceedings Alternate style
- Technical papers, not exceeding the limit of 6 pages, ACM SIG Proceedings Alternate style
Accepted papers will be published in the ACM Digital Library as part of the Middleware 2014 companion. Authors of the best (technical) papers will also be invited to submit an extended version of their work to a special article collection at the SpringerOpen Journal of Internet Services and Applications (JISA). We also strongly encourage multi-cloud submissions to the main conference’s demo and posters session.

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ORGANIZATION

** Organization committee / Technical program co-chairs:
Yehia Elkhatib (Lancaster University, UK)
Stefan Walraven (iMinds-DistriNet, KU Leuven, Belgium)

** Steering committee:
Gordon S. Blair (Lancaster University, UK)
Raouf Boutaba (University of Waterloo, Canada)
Renato Cerqueira (IBM Research, Brazil)
Wouter Joosen (iMinds-Distrinet, KU Leuven, Belgium)

** Technical program committee:
Danilo Ardagna (Politecnico di Milano, Italy)
Adam Barker (University of St Andrews, UK)
Daniel M. Batista (University of Sao Paulo, Brazil)
Theophilus Benson (Duke University, USA)
Antonio Celesti (University of Messina, Italy)
Félix Cuadrado (Queen Mary University of London, UK)
Tobias Distler (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany)
Paul Grace (IT Innovation, University of Southampton, UK)
Ross Horne (Kazakh British Technical University, Kazakhstan)
Hongxin Hu (Clemson University, USA)
Rüdiger Kapitza (TU Braunschweig, Germany)
Attila Kertész (MTA SZTAKI, Hungary)
Bert Lagaisse (KU Leuven, Belgium)
Thomas Ledoux (Mines de Nantes, France)
Mark Little (JBoss, UK)
Philippe Merle (INRIA Lille, France)
Christine Morin (INRIA Rennes, France)
Peter Pietzuch (Imperial College London, UK)
Luis Rodero-Merino (Gradiant, Spain)
Gareth Tyson (Queen Mary University of London, UK)
Luís Veiga (INESC-ID, Portugal)
Maxwell Young (Drexel University, USA)
Mohamed Faten Zhani (University of Waterloo, Canada)