Section: Overall Objectives

Context

The Myriads team research activities are conducted in the context of the future of Internet.

Internet of Services.

Myriads of applications are provided to more than one billion users (According to World Stats, there are 2,41 billion Internet users i.e. nearly a quarter of the total world population in March 2012 http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm .) all over the world. Over time, these applications are becoming more and more sophisticated, a given application being a composition of services likely to be executed on various sites located in different geographical locations. The Internet of Services is spreading all domains: home, administration, business, industry and science. Everyone is involved in the Internet of Services: citizens, enterprises, scientists are application, service and resource consumers and/or providers over the Internet.

Outsourcing.

Software is provided as a service over the Internet. Myriads of applications are available on-line to billions of users as, for instance, GoogleApps (Gmail). After decades in which companies used to host their entire IT infrastructures in-house, a major shift is occurring where these infrastructures are outsourced to external operators such as Data Centers and Computing Clouds. In the Internet of Services, not only software but also infrastructure are delivered as a service. Clouds turned computing and storage into a utility. Just like water or electricity, they are available in virtually infinite amounts and their consumption can be adapted within seconds like opening or closing a water tap. The main transition, however, is the change in business models. Companies or scientists do not need to buy and operate their own data centers anymore. Instead, the compute and storage resources are offered by companies on a “pay-as-you-go” basis. There is no more need for large hardware investments before starting a business. Even more, the new model allows users to adapt their resources within minutes, e.g., scale up to handle peak loads or rent large numbers of computers for a short experiment. The risk of wasting money by either under-utilization or undersized data centers is shifted from the user to the provider.

Sharing and Cooperation.

Sharing information and cooperating over the Internet are also important user needs both in the private and the professional spheres. This is exemplified by various services that have been developed in the last decade. Peer-to-peer networks are extensively used by citizens in order to share musics and movies. A service like Flickr allowing individuals to share pictures is also very popular. Social networks such as FaceBook or Linkedln link millions of users who share various kinds of information within communities. Virtual organizations tightly connected to Grids allow scientists to share computing resources aggregated from different institutions (universities, computing centers...). The EGEE European Grid is an example of production Grid shared by thousands of scientists all over Europe.