Contents Most of the focus in public cloud computing technology over the last 10 years has been on deploying massive, centralized data centers with thousands or hundreds of thousands of servers. The data centers are typically replicated with a few instances on a continent wide scale in semi-autonomous zones. This model has proven quite successful in economically scaling cloud service, but it has some drawbacks. Failure of a zone can lead to service dropout for tenants if the tenants do not replicate their services across zones. Some applications may need finer grained control over network latency than is provided by a connection to a large centralized data center, or may benefit from being able to specify location as a parameter in their deployment. Nontechnical issues, such as the availability of real estate, power, and bandwidth for a large mega data center, also enter into consideration.
Another model that may be useful in many cases is to have many micro or even nano data centers, interconnected by medium to high bandwidth links, and the ability to manage these data centers and interconnecting links as if they were one larger data center. Perhaps it is a better match for private enterprise clouds, which tend to be smaller than the large, public mega data centers, and it also has attractions for public clouds run by telcom carriers which have facilities in geographically diverse locations, with power, cooling, and bandwidth already available. It is attractive for mobile operators as well, since it provides a platform on which applications can be deployed and easily managed that could benefit from a tighter coupling to the wireless access network.
The goal of the International Workshop on Distributed Cloud Computing (DCC) is to explore the opportunities and limitations of the distributed cloud model. The workshop is interdisciplinary and touches both distributed systems as well as networking and cloud computing. It is intended as a forum where people with different backgrounds can learn from their respective fields and expertise. We want to attract both industry relevant papers as well as papers from academic researchers working on the foundations of the distributed cloud.
We received 17 high-quality submissions on this emerging topic, and have compiled an interesting program. Our program also includes a keynote given by Rick McGeer, Distinguished Technologist at HP Enterprise Services, as well as invited papers from leading research groups in the area, for example from Jennifer Rexford's group in Princeton, and from two large EU projects (UNIFY and BigFoot).
We are very grateful for the excellent work by the TPC, who helped to improve the papers with their detailed and constructive feedback. Thank you!
And now, enjoy the workshop and the papers!