Tuesday, 20 March 2012 at 9:30 AM - Wednesday, 21 March 2012 at 4:00 PM
Venue: Trinity College, OX13BH Oxford
OSS Watch is delighted to announce a new event in the Open Source Junction series, which brings together the best minds in industry and academia to explore how the two sectors can jointly innovate and exploit cutting edge technologies using open development.
Mobile and cloud technologies
Open Source Junction 3 is about mobile technologies and the cloud. This two-day workshop will showcase a selection of successful academic and industry projects featuring mobile and cloud technologies, and will provide delegates with the relevant knowledge and networking opportunities to help them build sustainable partnerships in this field.
Economies of scale and the potential for novel enhancements to core functions make cloud computing attractive to educational, public and private sector organisations alike. The opportunity to share expertise and applications via the various IaaS, PaaS and SaaS layers make the cloud an ideal environment for open innovation between organisations.
Cloud technologies can help institutions reduce environmental and financial costs and share the infrastructure load when collaborating with other organisations. Cloud computing can provide new teaching and research environments by allowing students and researchers to better manage projects and workloads, share digital workspaces with peers, store digital artefacts and research outputs, and access them from anywhere and at any time.
Cloud computing can also boost the geographic flexibility of organizations, and, when coupled with emerging mobile technologies, increase the mobility of staff. By using a combination of cloud and mobile technologies it becomes possible to remotely engage in and manage workflows and processes. It is therefore no longer necessary for collaborators to be co-located or restricted to a specific geographic location.
Cloud computing
There are various definitions of cloud computing, but for the purpose of this event we follow Gartner, who describe cloud computing as “a style of computing where massively scalable IT-related capabilities are provided 'as a service' to multiple external customers using Internet technologies”. Three categories of services are often mentioned in connection with cloud computing: Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
SaaS is based on the concept of renting software from a service provider rather than buying it yourself. The software in question is hosted on a centralized network server to make functionality available over the web. Also known as 'software on demand', SaaS is probably the most popular type of cloud computing because of its high degree of flexibility, enhanced scalability and reduced maintenance. Yahoo mail, Google docs and SalesForce CRM are some popular examples of SaaS.
PaaS offers a cloud-based development platform for developers. This platform is often optimised for a specific type of application domain, such as mobile applications, big-data, or customer relationship management, and therefore include a suite of useful tools and services. Developers write applications that take advantage of platform services, while the PaaS provider manages the infrastructure for application delivery. PaaS provides services to develop, test, deploy, host and maintain applications, as well as some support for the creation of applications. PaaS is commonly charged for on a metering or subscription model. Some examples of PaaS include WSo2 Stratos and RedHat OpenShift.
IaaS is the delivery of computing infrastructure as a fully outsourced service. It provides capabilities such as processing, networking, security and other resources allowing users to deploy their applications and data. IaaS users enjoy access to enterprise grade infrastructure and resources on a 'pay as you go' basis. Also referred to as Hardware as a Service, IaaS is a very flexible solution because virtualization can provide almost unlimited instances of servers thus making the use of the hosting hardware extremely cost-effective. Some examples of IaaS are Amazon S3/EC2, Microsoft Windows Azure, and VMWare vCloud.
Benefits of attending:
- Find out about successful open source projects involving mobile and cloud technologies
- Become familiar with issues and opportunities concerning the development and exploitation of open source solutions for the mobile and cloud computing sectors
- Understand the benefits and opportunities associated with building the OSJ community
- Network and explore partnership opportunities with past and present OSJ attendees
Target audience:
- R&D managers, senior strategists, software developers in the mobile and cloud related sectors
- Principal Investigators, research staff, project managers in Higher Education and Research
- Funding bodies with an interest in mobile and cloud technologies
The event will take place at Trinity College in Oxford. Lunch and refreshments will be provided. A number of accommodation options are available for individual booking.
Reports from past Open Source Junction events are available on the OSS Watch website [1 and 2]. OSJ1 focused on cross-platform mobile apps, and OSJ2 on context-aware mobile technologies.
