Cloud Computing Dependability: Report and Extended Papers of the Second International Workshop on Dependability Issues in Cloud Computing

One year after our first workshop on dependability issues in cloud computing, it is possible to say that cloud adoption reached ubiquity, paraphrasing a 2014 report [2]. In that document, RightScale, a cloud portfolio management company, says that 94% of the organisations they surveyed are running applications or at least experimenting with Infrastructure-as-a-Service. Moreover, 87% of these companies are using public clouds, often following a hybrid cloud approach. In a 2013 report, Verizon said that organisations were no longer using clouds just for development and testing, as production applications accounted for 60% of cloud usage [3]. A last January post in Forbes estimates that US businesses will spend $13 Billion in cloud computing in 2014 [1]. This level of cloud computing adoption suggests that the time is ripe for research on services and processes for cloud dependability and security. Governments are now aware of the benefits and challenges of cloud computing, as shown by initiatives such as the European Commission’s Cloud Computing Strategy and the U.S. Chief Information Officer and Federal CIO Council cloud.cio.gov . The academic community is not behind with a large number of conferences being promoted by professional societies such as the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Consequently, research in the area is thriving. The Second International Workshop on Dependability Issues in Cloud Computing – DISCCO 2013 – aimed to contribute to this trend on research on cloud computing with a focus on dependability and security. This section of the present issue of the Operating Systems Review aims to report the activities of the workshop and present extended versions of two papers selected from its program based on their timeliness and quality.