How would you present the project?
In a near future, applications won't be any more deployed on servers, but on flexible architectures : cloud and internet of things will converge, bringing new usages as they emerge (e.g. Smart building, internets of energy and logistics, big data, collaborative platforms and sharing economy…).
This is about hybrid cloud, elasticity of deployment, hot reconfiguration, and adaptative systems management. And this what OCCIware is about, as well : bridging altogether hardware, networking, datacenters, data and applications.
What is your role in the project?
We mostly work on hot deployment and reconfiguration of complex applications in hybrid cloud : in one word, our contribution is known as « deploy@OCCIware », and is about elastic cloud applications deployment, lifecycle and management.
We are also responsible for the « use-case » work package, a kind of showcase of the whole project technologies.
What key innovation do you bring or help to develop?
We have been working for 18 months with UJF, a french public university lab, industrializing a project called « Roboconf » : a deployment and hot reconfiguration system for complex applications on hybrid clouds.
Roboconf starts from a formal description of an application, i.e. its components, their configuration, and what information they need to exchange so they can work altogether. It provides in addition the tools to deploy the described application on a hybrid cloud, and then maintain its consistency over time (e.g. when nodes are added or removed in an elastic cloud scenario, Roboconf ensures that applications still operate properly).
OCCIware will offer some complimentary technologies to Roboconf (e.g. a cloud manager that will handle « intelligent » elasticity, based on load, SLA requirements, and expert rules), and will be an opportunity to make Roboconf more interoperable by adopting OCCI-related standards. Roboconf is expected to integrate smoothly in the global OCCIware outcome, as a module dedicated for applications lifecycle and consistency management.
About Pierre-Yves Gibello
Pierre-Yves is part, as a research engineer, of Linagora's advanced R&D workforce (about 15 people). Concerning OCCIware, he is responsible of a small lab (2 engineers from Linagora) based in Grenoble, with an office located in the UJF's facility (a french public university, also involved in OCCIware). This unit has been working for 18 months in partnership with UJF (also providing 2 researchers full-time) before OCCIware, so we are a joint lab of 4 people, already used to working together on cloud application deployment.
25 years in IT engineering, developing open-source software and driving industry/research collaborations. Includes 10 years as an entrepreneur, 10 years as a board member at OW2 consortium, and 9 years teaching at french Polytech engineer school. Still active as a software developer and OSS contributor.