Luxembourg National Research Fund

December 2016

IEEE´s CloudCom is the leading annual conference on cloud computing worldwide. The 2016 edition of the event took place in Luxembourg and saw over 200 international participants came together to discuss the latest developments in big data, security and privacy and other important topics in the context of ‘the cloud’. We took a closer look at some of the topics that were on the horizon.

Cloud computing = internet-based computing

In cloud computing, users share processing and data storage resources through the network. Depending on the user’s need, the cloud is very flexible and provides the necessary access to storage devices, computer clusters or other technical infrastructure. For the end user, however, the actual hardware resources are invisible, as if hidden inside a cloud – hence the name.

Cloud computing has been the main paradigm for computing in big networks for several years. Still, many cloud services are in their infancy. Much research and development is currently being done in the fields of handling big amounts of data, maintaining data security and privacy, and the convergence between classical high-performance computing and cloud computing.

IEEE world’s largest professional association

These and other cloud-related topics were addressed by the international experts during the 2016 CloudCom conference. This was the 8^th IEEE international Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science. The IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional association with over 400,000 members in science and engineering from 160 countries.

The 2016 conference took place from 12 – 15 December. It was hosted by the Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) of the University of Luxembourg, with financial support from the FNR’s RESCOM: Scientific Events programme, which provides co-funding for international scientific conferences and lecture series.

7 tracks on hot topics in cloud-computing

The conference was organised around 7 tracks on different hot topics: architecture and virtualisation, cloud services and applications, internet of things and mobile on cloud, big data, high performance computing in/with the cloud, security and privacy, and distributed cloud/cloud brokering/edge computing. Each track contained talks, workshops and practical tutorials. Several keynotes, among the most renowned Cloud expert, rounded off the programme.

The conference was opened with a keynote by Prof. Micha Dohler from King’s College London, UK. He spoke about ‘The Tactile Internet’ – a vision to create a tangible connection to the Internet, allowing users to actually feel remote things just as easily as videoconferences are held nowadays. That has the potential to transform the way that healthcare, engineering and wealth is delivered globally.

The conference took place in the Parc Hotel Alvisse in Luxembourg City.