Workshop on Next Generation Cloud Research Infrastructure

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Cloud Computing Research Infrastructure (CRI) provides an environment for computing and networking systems researchers to host their scientific experiments to advance knowledge and to educate the next generation of systems researchers. The systems research community has relied extensively on National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported computing research infrastructures to advance technologies underlying today's commercial cloud systems including computer and network virtualization, Infrastructure-as-a Service deployments, advanced programming models and software stacks, and software defined networks. Commercial compute clouds have also evolved rapidly in recent years, and promise to play a continued and growing role in accelerating scientific research. Researchers and educators can and do leverage these cloud platforms to accelerate and improve their research and teaching, complementing their use of specialized CRI systems. Given the evolution of research community experimental requirements and the rapid evolution of commercial cloud offerings, the computing research community faces the need to periodically assess the specialized research infrastructure it needs to advance science. This project seems to convene the research community to engage in a dialogue about future directions for NSF-supported cloud research infrastructures.The proposed workshop will bring representatives from academia, industry, and government to articulate a research agenda for advancing cloud research infrastructure. The two day workshop is planned for November, 2019, in Princeton, New Jersey. The project will also seek to supplement the workshop findings by surveying the broader computing and networking research community about their current and future use and expectations of cloud computing infrastructures. The workshop will seek to realize the following goals:1) convene key cloud research infrastructure stakeholders to evaluate the current state of academic cloud research infrastructure, and its role in the context of evolving academic use of commercial cloud offerings;2) provide a forum for infrastructure developers and experimenters to meet and engage in objective and constructive dialog about future directions for cloud infrastructure. Industry participants -- primarily from commercial cloud technology providers and public cloud operators -- will be invited to share their views about the complementary role of public infrastructure to advance science, and their anticipated technology requirements;3) allow researchers to exchange information about system needs to address their future research experiments, and assess the current and future impact that cloud research infrastructures can and will have on commercial cloud offerings; and4) exchange ideas on how to further develop and strengthen a workforce ready to contribute to the advancement of the large-scale cloud-based platforms that are increasingly central to the US economy.Following the workshop, report will be written and disseminated to share findings and survey results with the broader systems research community.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.