Cloud technology has gone through a tremendous development over the last few years, offering important benefits to their users. Many people use clouds on daily basis (without even realizing that they do so) with services such as web-based e-mail or social networks. Clouds are primarily platforms that allow execution in various forms across multiple resources. The different types of clouds have in common that they (directly or indirectly) enhance resources and services with additional capabilities related to manageability, elasticity and system platform independence. Several business models rapidly evolved to exploit this technology by providing software applications, platforms, data-storage, infrastructure and other hardware as services. The interrelations of these components have been ambiguous and the feasibility of enabling their interoperability has been debatable. Main questions still arise concerning data handling, security and multi-tenancy.
The main research objective of the Cloudscreens project is to research new topics that will contribute to the creation of future software-based services that combine cloud-based services, device-based personal spaces and smart networked objects for multimedia delivery and consumption. The project will focus on four interconnected topics: Quality of Service (QoS) in multi-service environments, personal spaces, smart environments, and new generation of user interfaces.
The goal of Cloudscreens project is to provide high quality training to the Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) through a diverse set of training events including on-job research training, personal skills development and carrier development. During this training the ESRs will be exposed to the state-of-the art techniques for researching into cloud services for multimedia delivery and consumption. This will also entail familiarising themselves with the available technologies in multimedia coding, processing, and communications systems. The training programme is realized by an international, intersectoral consortium. Being exposed to academic as well as industrial environments early in the career of ESRs will help them to make informed career choices and will increase the attractiveness to the private sector as well as strengthen the relationship between industry and academia. Each ESR has a well-defined individual project and will be part of a group of outstanding European researchers with a high level of employability and with great exposure to researchers in and outside the specific expertise field of cloud computing.
The overall outcome of the project is a scientific contribution to the creation of future software-based services that combine cloud-based services, device-based personal spaces and smart networked objects for multimedia delivery and consumption.