Archiv der Kategorie: Cloud Computing

Towards Cloud Computing Competence at InIT / ZHAW

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The Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) is one of the largest multi-disciplinary Universities of Applied Sciences in Switzerland with roughly 9000 students enrolled in a total of 24 Bachelor’s degree and 12 consecutive Master’s programs. One differentiating feature of ZHAW is its focus on industry co-innovation represented by 30 research institutes across 8 schools.

The Institute of Applied Information Technology (InIT) of the School of Engineering is currently looking for a

“Senior Researcher/Researcher in Service Engineering/Cloud Computing” (Download in PDF)

The successful candidate will conduct cutting-edge research in the area of Service Engineering / Cloud Computing. More precisely, InIT is currently working towards a Cloud Computing Competence Center for collaborative co-innovation with the Swiss high-tech SME sector covering the full range of aspects inherent to the Cloud Computing stack that is Software-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service, and Infrastructure-as-a-Service. Typical assignments are (not limited to):

  • Research in the area of Cloud Computing (OpenStack Framework)
  • Collaboration with Swiss high-tech SMEs in co-innovation projects
  • Definition, acquisition, and leadership of research proposals / projects (national + EU)
  • Supervision of student projects and research assistants
  • Publishing in national and international conferences, magazines, and journals

Applicants must have a degree in Computer Science, or related study, with excellent results in relevant disciplines. Willingness to engage and demonstrate applied research is a prerequisite. The ideal candidate will have a passion for computer communications, distributed systems, Internet technologies combined with a solid background in software development and Open Source Software.

Knowledge of English is a prerequisite for application, German is an advantage. Most people in Switzerland can communicate conveniently in English. We expect the candidate to be an internationally oriented, enthusiastic computer engineer that enjoys working in teams with a healthy mix of scientific and applied ambition. In return we provide intellectual liberty, opportunities for applied industrial collaboration, and competitive compensation based on Swiss standards.

For further information please contact
Gerold Baudinot, Head of Institute
Tel. +4158 934 70 68
E-Mail: baug@zhaw.ch

Interested? Then send your complete application with reference “T1131” to E-Mail: bewerbung.soe@zhaw.ch

Talking about Cloud Networking at the 27th Meeting of Wireless World Research Forum

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A first, stable draft of the Net!Works ETP expert group on Cloud Networking is ready for public release. The content, „Research Recomendations on Networking for Cloud Computing“ (final title tbd), will be presented at the upcoming 27th Meeting of the Wireless World Research Forum.

My slides and the proceedings are available for download: (slides) and (proceedings).

The paper will soon be accessible on the ETP Net!Works homepage.

Datacenter Network Design

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The Funkschau special edition „Datacenter 2011“ features an article about *server access technologies* (network design) within datacenters. The author elaborates on pros/cons of ToR vs EoR/MoR designs. Having read a couple of papers about this topic, to me, Top-or-Rack (ToR) seemed to be de-facto industry standard. Apparently, this is not the case.

Browsing the Web for some additional info I came across an excellent source on the overall topic (networks/datacenters/cloud computing/etc). Check, for instance, ToR vs EoR for a lengthy discussion on datacenter network design choices.

Another good source on the same / a similar topic
blog.scottlowe.org.

Cloud Computing in Switzerland

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Cloud computing seems to gain momentum in Switzerland.

Providers.
Cloud Sigma. A CC start-up located in Zurich offering innovative IaaS.

Associations.
Swiss EuroCloud
Swiss ICT CC Study Group


Read-worthy resources about CC in Switzerland.
EuroCloud Swiss Leitfaden Cloud Computing
Govermental adoption of CC in CH
IMAS report about CC in DACH
Computerworld: Cloud Computing in CH
IT Magazine: Cloud Computing in CH
ZHAW IT-Sourcing Studie 2011
Swiss ICT CC Publications
Cloud Research 2012

SAP Forum 2011, Mexico City

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Invited as speaker by SAPs Telco Industry Unit I had the pleasure to talk at the SAP Forum 2011 in Mexico City. Great event, well attended and even so organized.

The Telco Session was very well engaged and featured excellent speakers.
= Telco 2.0: New Business Models for Telco companies, Simon Terrance, CEO, STL Partners
= Sustainable Business for Telecom Industry, Jens Amail, SVP and Head of SAP Telecommunications Industry
= Monetizing Services in a hyper-connected World, Martin Schmid, Sales Director Convergent Charging, SAP
= Cloud Computing, New Technologies, and Co-Innovation, Thomas Michael Bohnert, Technical Director, SAP Research

An amazing speech with lots of insights was given by Simon. I especially enjoyed the discussion around Softbank, a telco that hands out femto cells plus DSL backhaul for FREE to its mobile subscribers in order to enhance mobile experience. A pure accident that femto cells were an element in my talk as well. Another interesting topic was the upstream-downstream business concept: Telcos as facilitator in the very heart of the Internet century.

Jens took on and presented SAPs strategy for the telco industry high-lightning convergent charging and and real-time analytics. Who says SAP does not have a reasonable telco footprint. With Highdeal first, and now Sybase, SAP took measures and if continued, may eventually exploit its huge experience and eco-system to become a true telco big-player.

And there was also Martin, an SAP telco veteran, making a strong case for convergent charging in a hyper-connected world, with cloud computing, mobile adds, services, or in general value-add at the forefront.

Finally, pleasure was mine to talk about tech transformations. To cut short, it was amazing to talk to an engaged crowed. The slides can be found here

The GEYSERS Project

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The GEYSERS project met in Zurich for its first General Assembly. One year on track, good progress, first results.

GEYERS is a project worth to keep an eye on. A strong technical vision aims at bringing together the IT and Telco world with a clean architecture for „Telco+IT“ fulfillment (Connectivity, Storage, Computing in a Service-oriented Design).

At first sight this is not fundamentally new. Yet GEYSERS definition goes beyond pure Telco-based (GMPLS) provisioning with some (GRID-like) IT resources at edges plus some Web-Service interfaces.

By defining an SML-layer, that is based on Service-oriented Infrastructure concepts, IT-standards, and SLA-based service composition and orchestration, GEYSERS reference architecture turns into a complete Infrastructure-as-a-Service framework for public/private Cloud Computing with a IT-northbound / Telco-southbound interface. All this based on accepted concepts and respective open standards in the IT plus Telco domain.

For more details check the architecture reference model at the FP7 GEYSERS Website and the technical specs at GEYSERS Tech-Specs

Do not miss the GEYSERS Video!

In Quest of Online / Cloud Storage

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[Update 26th of December]
Today I found the solution, Use Dropbox without Gnome. Special thanks to the author of this post.

The tool is trivial to install, very straight forward to use, just excellent. Here is a copy of the instructions:

1. Download the closed source Dropbox Linux client from http://www.getdropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86 (x86_64 for 64 bit)
2. Extract the contents and you should get a .dropbox-dist folder out of the archive. Move the folder to $HOME
3. Run ~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd.

In the meantime I got SuSe+WebDav+Dolphin working for MyDrive.ch. Only rather small files are supported, though. I didn““““t figure out what“s the exact size/limit, mostly since I prefer a truly „public“ folder and MyDrive.ch supports only a „guest user“ (you need to share this login).

[Initial post, 31st of October]
My web hoster asks for more money for better service. Fine, business as usual.

But I just don““t need a whole bundle of services. What I need is more online storage. These are the results of some web research

A few requirements
1 – Public accessible folder
2 – WebDav, FTP, or whatever tool for convenient access (upload) from Linux (KDE, Suse)
3 – 1GB+ storage
4 – Free

Dropbox
OK: 1, 3, 4, Partially ok – 2 (requires Nautilus File Manager but I perfer Dolphin, which has native WebDav and split-view support), Popular service based on Amazon AWS

Google Docs
OK: 1, 3, 4, Not OK: 2, Well-known integrated services, only one GB free

Gmail Drive
OK: 3, 4, Not OK: 1, 2, Well-known integrated services, no public access though and subject to all the mail analysis by Google (guess that““s the same for Google Docs)

Box Net
OK: 1, 3, 4, Not OK: 2, Online storage pioneer

MyDrive
OK: 2, 3, 4, Not OK: 1, Nice Swiss-native service

SMEStorage
OK: 1, 4 Not OK: 2, 3, No closer look as storage tiny

MS SkyDrive
OK: 1, 3, 4 Partially OK: 2, Cryptic configuration under Linux, requires a MS-compatible tool to extract WebDav addresses