Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

The Internet is a conglomerate of computer networks that enables transfer of content worldwide. The Cloud is a platform that enables the generation of this content. Such a platform consists of many interconnected hardware and software components, for example, network switches, computers, and software products running on these computers. Each and every one of these components may fail, causing an outage or degradation of the Cloud service. Cloud services are ubiquitous, being used by virtually any entity: the general public, governments, health institutions, non-profits, and enterprises. It is critical to ensure the reliable and transparent operation of Cloud platforms, as an outage or degradation of service may affect a large number of stakeholders. In this collaborative project, alongside IBM, we will focus on the early detection of a failure of their Cloud platform, as well as identification of the potential root cause of this failure. This will help to speed up the fix of the failure before it affects a large number of clients. Once the failure is fixed, it is important to identify what led to the failure, to prevent it from occurring again. This has to be done in a transparent manner to ensure trust between the Cloud provider and its consumers. We will create an immutable log storage system that will ensure transparency. These deliverables will lead to improvement of Cloud platforms, which, in turn, will lead to increased customer satisfaction. Given the uniqueness of Cloud services, Canadians will benefit from making Cloud platforms more robust, transparent, and accountable.