SRC-IoT 2016

I have had the honour of working with Professor Paul Watson to create the System Research Challenges Workshop. For the first year we focussed on IoT and it's possible we may keep that high-level theme next time. But it really great to see and hear the attendees embrace the underlying issues which are presented by large-scale distributed systems, which IoT embodies: reliability, fault tolerance, security, trustworthiness, data management etc. Of course all of the presentations had an IoT focus, but even there we had a wide range of examples, from field devices through gateways and including wearables (yes, there were a lot of side discussions about whether some of these IoT devices would ever really take off.)

We had attendees from industry (e.g., Red Hat, IBM and ARM) as well as SMEs and arcademia (e.g., Newcastle University, Lyon and Cambridge). It was a great mix of practical and theoretical, highlighting some of the challenges we have ahead of us in research and development. And as with many of these kinds of events, it was the discussions around the sessions that generated as much interesting conversation as during the presentations.

As well as 2 days of 30 minute presentations (maybe we'll try and get the agenda published somewhere), we also held a 2 hour lightning talk session on the first evening. Here anyone attending, whether they had a formal presentation or not during the event, was encouraged to present on a topic for 5 minutes. There hadn't been much preparation for this beforehand, so there was a little concern about whether we'd be able to fill the time. We needn't have worried - we could have gone much longer than the allotted 2 hours. It was a lot of fun. In fact my favourite talk of the entire event was probably here when Jonathan Halliday gave a presentation onf Big Data over the centuries, going back hundreds of years and managing to also touch on open source 400 years ago!

In conclusion, I thought the event went well. I'm hoping we can do it again next year, perhaps with the same theme or maybe we need to change it. We'll know closer to the time.

Hybrid Cloud

I've read a few articles from analysts or media recently where they talk about 2014 as the year of Hybrid Cloud. I think this is good to hear, but I also wonder why it's taken so long for some in the industry to accept the inevitable? OK that's more of a rhetorical question, since I do know the answer and I'm sure many of you will too.

In reality I find it amusing, with more of an "I told you so" approach! Several people, as well as myself, have been talking about the need for private cloud. Whether it's issues with security, reliability or simply getting data into and from public clouds, public cloud has limitations and is definitely not right for everyone or every application/service. That's not to say that private clouds are problem free but it's not necessarily the same problems and neither should it be.

The combination of private and public clouds, coupled with cloud bursting when needed, is what we should all be aiming for, with pure private or pure public use simply a degenerate case. I find it interesting that Amazon now has a position on private and hybrid clouds, which is very different from what they were saying 4 years ago.

I also still believe, as I stated back then, that the whole definition of cloud needs to change. Whether it's ubiquitous computing or the Internet of Things, the explosion of devices around us and their capabilities (processor speed, memory, network access, etc.) has to become part of the cloud, and probably its biggest part. It makes no sense to ignore the powerful options that this gives us, let alone the fact we'll have no choice due to Shannon's Limit.

So although 2014 may be the year of hybrid cloud, it's the true cloud of devices that I'm still more excited about. Most of the options it creates still lie unexplored before us and I think that's where we should be adding a little more focus.