IC4 focused on four core research themes, with each of these areas perceived to be of equal importance by the industry participants. The themes are necessarily broad and intended to underpin the research direction of the centre long term.
- Architecture including scalability and performance, reliability and resilience, interoperability, portability and migration to the cloud.
- Service Lifecycle including service delivery, service levels for a quality cloud service and cloud service level assessment.
- Business Research including business and organisational models, regulations for cloud services and cloud as a competitive advantage.
- Cloud Security including scalable and single/multi-tenant environments, data transfer in the cloud, mobile and security in the cloud, and risk management and disaster recovery.
Research conducted under each theme is supportive, synergistic and closely coupled with other aspects of the centre so that good use is made of the available research funding and value can be enhanced. In arriving at the four themes, no distinction made between server side and client side research, both are considered important aspects to the centre.
Research Programmes
IC4 is organised around three research principles:
- Design for Growth
- Design for Best Service Provision
- Design for Widest Acceptance
Each research programme is made up of multiple multi-institutional and interdisciplinary projects. Based on problems identified through consultation with industry, projects are prioritised by the IC4 Steering Group and decisions to continue with projects, refine or reallocate research resources are based on regular progress reviews. Additional details on current research projects can be found below.
Design for Growth
The objectives of the Design for Growth research programme within IC4 are threefold:
- To accelerate the development of Irish Cloud Service Providers.
- To accelerate the adoption of Cloud technologies by Irish organisations.
- Business Research including business and organisational models, regulations for cloud services and cloud as a competitive advantage.
- To showcase Ireland’s capabilities in Cloud technology.
Design for Best Service Provision
The objectives of the Design for Best Service Provision research programme within IC4 are threefold:
- To develop recommendations, guidelines and innovative approaches to increase reliability and resilience for cloud computing services.
- To develop tools that enable Cloud Service Providers measure and communicate service quality.
- To develop recommendations, guidelines and tools to support enterprise adoption of cloud technologies
Design for Widest Acceptance
The objectives of the Design for Best Widest Acceptance research programme within IC4 are threefold:
- To develop recommendations, guidelines and tools that support interoperability and ease of migration to the Cloud.
- To develop recommendations, best practices, methodologies and tools to support multi-platform applications and the portability of applications and data.
- To demonstrate innovative application of security tools to support secure transfers of data between different Cloud environments.
- To develop standardised approaches and methods to ensure data integrity and security when using mobile devices with Cloud Computing.
- To develop innovative approaches risk assessment, management and recovery in relation to cloud computing.