Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

International Initiatives

See also: http://planete.inrialpes.fr/cloudy-associated-team/

Cloud computing is a form of computing where general purpose clients (typically equipped with a web browser) are used to access resources and applications managed and stored on a remote server. Cloud applications are increasingly relied upon to provide basic services like e-mail clients, instant messaging and office applications. The customers of cloud applications benefit from outsourcing the management of their computing infrastructure to a third-party cloud provider. However, this places the customers in a situation of blind trust towards the cloud provider. The customer has to assume that the "cloud" always remains confidential, available, fault-tolerant, well managed, properly backed-up and protected from natural accidents as well as intentional attacks. An inherent reason for today's limitations of commercial cloud solutions is that end users cannot verify that servers in the cloud and the network in between are hosting and disseminating tasks and content without deleting, disclosing or modifying any content. This project seeks to develop novel technical solutions to allow customers to verify that cloud providers guarantee the confidentiality, availability and fault-tolerance of the stored data and infrastructure.