OpenCloudware FSN funded R&D project

About

OpenCloudware is a project funded by the French FSN (Fonds national pour la Solidarité Numérique) programme, call Cloud n° 1, and was initially submitted under the name "CloudForce". It has been co-labelled by the Systematic, Minalogic and SCS poles.

The OpenCloudware project aims at building an open software engineering platform, for the collaborative development of distributed applications to be deployed on multiple Cloud infrastructures. It will be available through a self-service portal. OpenCloudware targets virtualized multi-tier applications such as JavaEE - OSGi. The results of OpenCloudware will contain a set of software components to manage the lifecycle of such applications, from modelling (Think), developing and building images (Build), to a multi-IaaS compliant PaaS platform (Run) for their deployment, orchestration, performance testing, self-management (elasticity, green IT optimisation) and provisioning. Applications will be deployed potentially on multi IaaS (supporting either one IaaS at a time, or hybrid scenarios). The results of the project will be made available as open source components through the OW2 Open Source Cloudware initiative.

The main technological issues addressed by the project are:

End-to-end (retro-)modelling, from applications to the PaaS and IaaS services of the cloud computing platform. This also includes application migration, and should enable to quickly generate a model for an existing application and facilitate its migration to the cloud.
Automated orchestration of the platform modules to manage the Dev to Cloud lifecycle of virtualized applications.
Autonomic management of the dynamic changes that occur in Cloud PaaS applications, allowing elasticity (self-adaptation to load), energy optimisation (automated placement, capacity management, network management – Green IT), as well as the reliability of the deployment and the deployed services (self-repair).
Multi-Cloud IaaS interfaces for interoperability, taking into account IaaS capabilities
Taking into account the global application context and its usage in the intelligent PaaS engine, in order to optimize the service in terms of performance, energy efficiency, cost, …
Security: isolation of applications, encryption and security of images, identity and roles management

The OpenCloudware project started in January 2012. Most components on which OpenCloudware developments are based can be found on OW2. They include Sirocco, ProActive, Entropy, CLIF, JOnAS, JASMINe, JORAM and Petals ESB. More information about the project outcomes will be published gradually on the project public website (coming soon).

Partners

INDUSTRIAL: Bull, France Telecom, Thales Communications, Thales Services
ACADEMIC: Inria, IRIT – INP Toulouse, Télécom Paris Tech, Télécom Saint Etienne, Université Joseph Fourier, Université de Savoie – LISTIC
SMEs: ActiveEon, eNovance, eXo Platform, Peergreen, EBM Websourcing, UShareSoft
Associations: Armines, OW2

Coordinator: France Telecom